Flora's general - with a casual gesture - had moulded the raw Fade into a model of Redcliffe Castle; yet, for all its external similarities, it was no true likeness. The architecture was wrong; the battlements ran crooked as though drawn by a childish hand, and there were windows where no chambers existed. The door, which seemed to be made for a child, accommodated Alistair with ease. He found that he did not need to duck, and straightened up; wishing fervently that he had some sort of weapon. The air prickled with a strange and restless energy, like the herald of an approaching storm.
To Alistair's astonishment, he had not emerged into the cavernous space of the great hall. The entrance that he had used ought to have led to the vast hall used by the arl for feasts and public audiences. It was where they had fought Connor Guerrin, bisected with long tables set out in a military formation.
Instead, to his dismay, the courtyard door led instead to the castle kitchens: a mazelike complex of interconnected chambers. He knew Redcliffe's kitchens well enough - he had often been expelled from their tempting depths - and this conjured version was not the same hot and smoky warren that he had navigated as a child. The hearth curdled with green flame and he did not recognise the smell drifting from the ovens. Fresh rushes were strewn across the floor, and they rustled as though disturbed by hurried feet.
"Shit," Alistair said, realising that he would not be able to rely on familiarity to navigate this interpretation of Redcliffe Castle. "I don't know how to get to the tower where she is. Nothing's where it should be."
He felt like a halla caught in a trap: legs broken by a vice while a wolf advanced in casual lethality. The predator became a twisted mockery of Duncan, moving with sadistic purpose towards the oblivious, daydreaming Flora.
Flora's general inclined its head, wizened skin loaned a sickly hue from the hearth.
"You must climb."
Alistair, setting out across the chamber, did not think that this was particularly helpful advice. He ducked to avoid a hanging rack of meat, pushing aside several rabbit carcasses and the flayed skin of a man. The odour emanating from the bread oven was not bread: it smelt like roasted pork.
Passing the oven, he entered a corridor lined with shelves: each shelf piled high with platters, bowls and tankards. They gleamed as though newly polished, although none of the reflected faces he glimpsed belonged to him. In the distance, he could hear a voice bellowing out a list of dishes: the words distorted by a subterranean echo.
"Eye of the round roast, asparagus soup, sautéed fiddlehead, brandy-soaked pears! Where's that blasted boy? The fire's gone out!"
Alistair never caught the spirit that accompanied him in motion. Instead, Flora's general seemed to move in a series of static images: like a child's parchment flipping-book thumbed more slowly. It made for disconcerting company; more so since the scowl reminded him unpleasantly of Mac Tir.
He continued down the passage as the cook's voice faded into the distance: the reflected eyes swivelled in his wake. If the kitchens followed the layout of its real-world counterpart, the next doorway should have opened up into the castle buttery. To Alistair's surprise, the door indeed revealed a circular chamber that he recognised. The buttery was lined with ceramic tile to keep it cool, and a vast wooden butter churn was kept lidded in its centre. The various ladles and churning sticks lined the walls on their respective pegs.
Astonished that at least one part of this Fade conjuration seemed to align with reality, Alistair proceeded cautiously around the butter churn. As he passed by, an irritable voice echoed from beneath its wooden lid.
"Leave me ALONE!"
This was followed by a shriek more animal than human. Recoiling in shock, Alistair collided with the wall and sent several ladles clattering to the tiles. He swore and began to bend to retrieve them - then cursed himself again for wasting time. Setting his eyes on the far door - which would normally lead to Redcliffe's brewery - he left the buttery with haste.
The door led instead into the keep's great hall; the ceiling rafters exposed like the hull of a ship. The tables were laid out in their ordered array, the benches aligned with mathematical precision. The fireplaces that flanked the vast space blazed with green flame, as had the hearth in the kitchen. The hall appeared to be deserted; the only sound each echoed footstep.
Alistair advanced with caution, wondering if some even more malevolent incarnation of Connor Guerrin lurked at the far end. At his side, Flora's general flickered in and out of existence like the last smouldering moments of an oil lamp. It's feet, despite being encased in ornately carved steel, made no sound against the flagstones.
"Ah, wonderful. Tis' my lucky day indeed."
The sly and familiar voice curled from the furthest reaches of the hall. Alistair stopped in his tracks and then stifled a groan, wondering whether it would be preferable to encounter an abominable child. Morrigan rose fluidly from the step upon which she had been perched, her eyes made glittering olive by the green hearthlight. From what Alistair could recall of the witch, this version seemed entirely true to life; down to the wreath of delicate animal bones that decorated her neck and wrists.
"I hoped that the old woman would free herself first," Morrigan continued airily, seemingly unbothered by the strangeness of the situation. "Despite being even more venerable in years than my blasted mother, she proved her skill well-enough earlier. If we are to face a demon, I would wish her at my side."
The longer that she spoke, the more obvious it became that the apparent ease was a cloak donned to guard herself. Although Morrigan was naturally familiar with the Fade, this Veiled corner lay beyond her control. She too had been plunged into a distorted dream, although it had not managed to fully sink its claws into her.
Morrigan's gaze passed over Alistair - as far as she was concerned, the young warrior was even less useful here than he was in the waking world - and settled on the spirit at his side. Her mouth opened in involuntary astonishment; a rare lapse of composure.
"Have you seen Flora?" Alistair demanded, closing the gap between them. "Maker's Breath, say that you've seen her."
Morrigan shook her head, not taking her eyes from the armoured apparition. Age blurred like watercolour paint on its ascetic features: the beaked nose and thin lips the only constant around a shifting landscape of wrinkled and then unblemished skin. Liver spots faded and reformed; sagging jowls tautened; the blurred eyesight took on renewed clarity. The constant drift between thirty and sixty was disorientating to watch.
"I have not. I awoke in this wretched construction to find some pathetic imitation of my mother hovering above me. Pah!" The witch made a disgusted face. "I saw through its ruse in an instant. My mother would never have spoken with such tenderness. I incinerated the wizened crone where she stood."
Alistair felt the clench of panic in his gut once again; like a great fist had taken his stomach and squeezed. Morrigan saw the raw fright on his face and her yellow eyes narrowed.
"I take it you've lost your 'sister-warden'. Have you not come across her yet in this mockery of my Wilds?"
She waved a dark-nailed hand as though the array of tables and chairs had reverted to their original state: tangled trunks of wood amidst a southern forest. Whatever iteration of the Fade Morrigan existed in, it did not resemble the construct of Redcliffe Castle in Alistair's mind.
"No," Alistair said in response, the word sour with nausea. "Shit. Help me find her."
Surprisingly Morrigan did not snap out a scathing retort, though it had emerged as an instruction rather than a request. Instead, she inclined her head and rose with a whisper of tiny animal bones; the linked cartilage around her wrists rustling.
The three of them - mage, warrior and spirit - crossed the breadth of the great hall. The door seemed to slide further away with each step they took towards it. A twitch of movement caught Alistair's eye as they passed: he glanced to the side to see a small boy crouched beside a hearth. A moment longer and it became clear that the boy was constructed from jointed wood rather than flesh and bone, like a dressmaker's mannequin. The Fade's imitation of Connor was playing with a family of small wax figures, inching them across the flagstones in a mimicry of life. Suddenly, in a fit of temper, the boy threw the father into the fire.
Alistair realised that he very much did not want to draw the small apparition's attention. Fortunately, Morrigan seemed to feel the same way. Neither of them spoke until they had finally reached the elusive door and passed over its stone threshold. Instead of a corridor that Alistair knew well - as a child he had carried trays of teetering goblets between its stark stone walls - they emerged at the base of a spiralling stair. A tower of unknown height extended above them, the gloom punctuated by precise angles of daylight.
Alistair took the briefest of moments to gather himself before continuing. On a primal level, the world beyond the Veil felt strangely familiar. Although only mages retained autonomy in the Fade, everyone else - save for the dreamless dwarves - slid unconscious into its unknowable depths during slumber. He clung to this faint kernel of precognition, aware how vital it was that he kept a sound mind.
"I take it we're climbing this hill?" Morrigan asked, her words drawn up into the lantern-lit eaves as though inhaled.
Alistair did not know how to respond - it was a set of circular stone steps that lay before them - and so gave a voiceless grunt. He took the lead, wishing that he had the cool, comforting press of a weapon against his thigh.
The spirit did not walk up the spiralling stair with them. It appeared three steps ahead, and when he looked behind it was also a half-turn below. Alistair never saw it vanish or reappear: it seemed to exist in both places at once.
And yet in neither, he thought, recalling what it had said.
The shafts of daylight that lit every sixth stair were tinted a greenish hue, as though the tower was submerged beneath the water. Alistair glanced through one narrow window as he passed by, and stopped in abrupt astonishment. Instead of the castle courtyard, a vast and endless floodplain extended to an indistinct horizon. Three vast waterfalls fed into a foaming caldera. Even at a distance the roar of untamed water was audible. He had heard stories of similar places in the Anderfels, where countless miles of land stretched wild and bare.
"Maker's Breath," he said, staring. "What's that?"
Morrigan, who had almost collided with him, scowled and gave an unhelpful shrug. It was unclear whether she still believed that they were climbing a hill in the Wilds.
"Ferelden," replied the general, swift and irritable. "The place named for the first."
"The first -what? the first king?" Alistair's guess was met with a terse nod. "But - that looks nothing like Lake Calenhad."
"The lake is not yet made."
Alistair stared through the window a moment longer, and then continued upwards with his jaw clenched and teeth gritted. He wanted nothing more than to retrieve his sister-warden and awaken from this horrendous dream.
The stairwell seemed to shift direction as he climbed; the steps doubling back on themselves in some impossible feet of engineering. Still, Alistair pressed on, convinced that they were still climbing. Morrigan made no sound as she followed him, her tread light as a cat's against the stone. He found himself wishing that she would make one of her customary barbed comments - a shred of normalcy - but the witch seemed to be equally as disconcerted.
"Can't you make the little fool see sense?" she asked, the question directed at Flora's general. "I was able to foil this demon's conjured trick in a heartbeat."
"She is naive," the spirit replied from a half-turn of the stair above. "And not used to such deception. In the Fade - in usual times - she was always protected."
The architecture of the general's speech was archaic; the dialect of the words many centuries old. It cast no silhouette on the curving wall as it waited on the upper stair. The laurel wreath carved on its breastplate was exquisite crafted: the leaves veined so finely that they could have been organic.
The thought entered Alistair's head unprompted as he climbed: that's a Highever banner.
"It is not," came the general's acerbic reply, drifting past the stair's central spine.
Alistair supposed that this was what Flora lived with constantly, and understood her bemusement at any notion of privacy.
"It is the sigil of the great Cousland dynasty," continued the old statesman, grandiose and stern. "Did you never study your nation's heraldry, son of Maric?"
Alistair ground his teeth. "No. Too busy mucking out the stables, I suppose."
He recognised it now: the symbol of the family that governed Ferelden's unruly and ragged-toothed north. The Couslands were descended from one of the Six: the half-dozen original Alamarri tribes from before years were numbered.
The young Warden and the witch continued to ascend the tower. The steps were not hewn at regular heights and the result was a disjointed, dizzying climb. As the next window approached, a breathless Alistair eyed it with trepidation. The light spilling through the glassless space was tinted an orange hue. When he looked out, he saw the city of Denerim spread before him: carved into pieces by the canals that fed from the Amaranthine estuary. The Royal Palace and noble district formed a serrated silhouette on the city's northern slopes. All was ablaze; untended fire had devoured each of the seven districts. A ceiling of black smoke obscured any natural light.
The vision was so convincing that Alistair felt heat from the fire lick against his face. He recoiled from the window, and then deliberately averted his gaze: questions only led to further delay.
In Morrigan's view, they were not climbing a tower but a strange and rugged hillock in the midst of the Wilds. There was no window for her to glance through but she followed the angle of Alistair's bewildered stare nonetheless. Her eyebrow quirked and her lips pursed, but what the witch saw, she kept to herself.
The next turn of the stair brought a window that showed Loghain Mac Tir removing his armour in the centre of a shadowed tent, his face sour with a blend of emotions. Determination was scoured across his brow; while weariness sunk the sallow cheeks inwards. When he turned towards the lantern, a flicker of regret caught the light.
Alistair felt a storm surge of rage roll upwards from his gut, potent enough to unsteady him. He took a blind half-step towards the window, fingers groping for a hilt that was not there.
"Whatever you are seeing, 'tis a falsehood. Remember your goal."
Morrigan's warning emerged sharp and brittle, yet it was enough to rein in the young man's anger.
Find Flora.
Alistair turned away from the window and set his face to the next curve in the stair, only to tense at the unmistakable sound of combat. He had no shield and no weapon but he threw himself up the steps like a hound sighting it's prey; crashing his shoulder against the wall in his haste to round the stair.
The light changed to accommodate a different space as a landing led through to a small guard-chamber: the sort that sat directly above a gateway so that visitors could be monitored. It made no sense for such a room to be located halfway up a looming tower, but there was nothing that made sense in the Fade. The world beyond the Veil operated by its own rules, malleable as liquid glass.
Arrow-slit windows painted stripes of light on the tiles. Leaning against the wall on the far side of the chamber was the senior instructor who had guided them up through the Circle - Wynne. She was breathing hard, staff still smouldering. The knot of grey hair atop her head was fraying. The charred remains of something unrecognisable lay at her feet.
The light in the chamber changed again; a dark seam opening in its centre. Wynne looked up and readied her staff once more. Her face contorted in shock as she saw Alistair in the doorway, mouth opening to call a warning.
"Watch- !"
There came a hiss of static discharge. Faster than any mortal reflex could counter, the seam released a point of violet light that extended towards Alistair like an elongated dart. Before he could blink, the energy dissipated in a ripple before his face: the chamber diluted by golden light.
The young man felt joy course through his veins: that was Flora's shield! Then he noticed the subtle differences: although it claimed the same winter-sun hue and cobweb-thinness, this iteration of the barrier was made from a single, metallic sheath. It was more akin to a physical shield than Flora's fishing net, made up of organic, fibrous vessels.
Flora's general appeared in the chamber before Alistair; in a way that made it seem as though it had always been there. Once again youthful, it shot a contemptuous glare at the clawed arm now extracting itself from the seam of energy. The seam tore apart like vellum; the demon's limb lay severed on the tiles. Alistair noticed that the general's gauntlet now gleamed gold.
"Forgive us for trespassing in your domain."
Wynne was not speaking to him, or Morrigan. The senior instructor had her face angled towards the spirit, but her eyes were cast downwards in careful deference. This old mage was accustomed to venturing through the alien realms of the Fade, and she had learnt to treat the inhabitants with respect.
"We press on."
The general's retort was blunt; the air surrounding it distorted with a constant flux of energy. Alistair, before he turned back towards the spiral stair, caught a glimpse of the senior enchanter's face. The woman was staring at the armour-clad spirit with a mixture of shock and wary fascination.
Alistair continued on: up the spiralling stair that seemed as though it would never end. He heard Morrigan's cat-tread on the stone behind him, and then the footsteps of the senior enchanter. The three of them made their way towards the tower's apex; not speaking and eyes set unblinking on their destination. Every sixth step, the limestone wall opened up in a window: Alistair studiously ignored their false visions.
"We must surely reach the top soon!"
This frustrated entreaty came from Morrigan. Strands of black hair were plastered to her sweaty forehead like streaks of ink. This was not the Wilds that the witch knew; it was a foul and debased interpretation.
"You are there," replied Flora's general, from a place unseen.
Then the light changed again and Alistair felt a cold dampness adhere to his face. He took the last few steps at a run, emerging breathless at the top of the staircase.
What should have been the flat roof of Redcliffe's tallest tower was instead a courtyard constructed from decaying stone; lined with the toothed remnants of columns and overgrown by moss. The banner of the silver griffon writhed against a crumbling wall, teased by the wind that stalked Ostagar in perpetuity.
In the centre of the courtyard stood a tent that Alistair knew well. Despite his rank, Duncan had never used any larger or grander accommodation. It was hexagonal in shape and stained from many seasons of use; the pole to the right of the entrance was slightly bent. It was engulfed almost entirely by olive-green flame.
AN: OK so this is my interpretation of the Fade this time round - last time, I didn't even bother and basically did Flora waking up and going to kill a demon. I definitely could not be arsed to try to write up the Fade the way that it's done in the game - all those weird islands, turning into different things. Lol! I fucking hated that level!
So this is my way of incorporating a bit more weirdness (or trying to). I also wanted to feature Flora's general spirit instead of the mouse thing.
God I can't wait to not be writing in italics! It's so annoying to write in (and read, I'm sure)
Thank you for reading! I swear, I always think of lots of interesting things I want to include in these notes when I'm writing the chapter, and then when it comes to actually writing the notes my brain is like asgshshdgahshdddgh
