That night, light opens to swallow the boy who will be Caius in turn, and he wakes with a frown. Brows furrow, not confused — confusion is practically an admission of defeat, and one frustratingly disingenuous response is hardly reason for that, but an unnamed, sourceless anger sticks in his jaw all the same.
It's months before the experiment repeats. His nights are otherwise occupied. The walk to Kirkwall is long — the walk from his body, longer, and if practicality were all that ruled him maybe this wouldn't be worth the risk, but alone on the barren highlands of the Free Marches for weeks on end with nothing but goats and spirits for company, Caius keeps prodding at the idea like tongue at rotten tooth, and one night he goes back. A week later, again. It's sporadic, infrequent. It gets easier every time.
The face is never his again. Disguise is a skill he's still building — some nights the eyes are still his, the shapes of the fingers, a sliver of that young human boy's features reflected on the surface of a pool, but it's always the approximation of someone else who happens into Cedric's dreams. An elderly elf, a Chantry sister, a young dwarven pickpocket, a troublesome mage. One asshole merc bears a potentially familiar smirk; another stubborn companion is a literal mule, even if its mane keeps bursting into messy brown curls.
The circumstances change too, the mechanism of danger evolving as naturally and nonsensically as from any dream, but there's always a choice: one life or another. Yours or a stranger's. Yours or a mage's. A stranger's or a friend's. One night it's a spooked carthorse barreling toward a cliffside platform full of children or young human woman who looks remarkably like Gwenaëlle, and Caius considers whether he ought to be keeping a tally.
Tonight, it's late before the dream even begins. He shouldn't be out like this, tired and soul-worn and far from his body after another night wasted interrogating spirits who have no answers but the ones plucked from his own mind — and he realizes that fact at precisely the moment he pulls Cedric from his own dream, into someplace he didn't intend.
A library creaks into focus. Old, dusty, small enough to fit in one room of the modest Tevene manor it inhabits, but still large enough to accommodate a sunken clear space at its center, strewn with parchment and scrolls, chalk and ash. Candlelight makes for poor lighting; shadows loom. Something else looms within them.
Sometimes it's easy. Your life for a stranger's, for a mage; a friend.
Sometimes it's worse, sending folks to the grave with no time to think, only fumbling later for a reason. Gwen'd kill him if he let a kid come to harm. Vanya's a soldier, he knows the risks —
There are times that reason fails. Fifi's lighter than Gela, but she's not the one he hauls up a cliff. There are times he gets angry, curses what's coming. The longer they're at it, the Fade bends toward Caius, expectant. Already pressed to shape.
One night, there's a sacked town; an old man straining for a spell. There are orders. Another: Enemies above, a trapped street below. An injured woman, and a Rift that must be shut.
Choices. Fight, kill. Die, choose. Sporadic, infrequent, and he can tell a little now when it's coming; a ripple in the nerves that wrap his ear. A shift of that great hum. When he steps into the stables tonight, he isn't surprised to find them a library.
The light draws him as a moth. At the edge of awareness, his sleeves rearrange themselves. Cedric looks past the books, hunting ash and pattern.
They're too short, of course — the sleeves, threadbare with ragged strings trimmed, old stains bleached, but a fine fabric once, because we can't have gossip about how poorly kept the servants are, but no one can be expected to buy the boy clothes at that rate. A wave of cold shame heralds the uncanny stretching of spindly wrists, Cedric's shadow lengthening beneath him, before the dream's attention can be forced back toward light.
Light, ash, pattern. The lattermost is as much felt as seen, the lines as indistinct as in any sleep haze but still known, recognition cementing inch by inch. Barrier glyphs encircle the outermost edge. A few feet in, with room to stand between, another barrier trails round something more elaborate.
It's complex, and hard to quite see around the mountain of cloak that unfurls out of the darkness above it. A towering figure hunches into the back half of the room. One long arm snaps out from under fabric, unfolding at an elbow, then another elbow, to concertina a stick of red chalk across that elaborate design.
It doesn't notice Cedric. Its attention is fixed on the book in front of it, the ritual at its many fingertips, and not the boy sneaking in for a closer look — but for how long? It feels so important, vital, that he see this final piece, but the risk of drawing this creature's attention turns the air in his lungs to ice. His breath leaves white trails in the air.
He'll be seen. He'll be caught. The shadow tethered to his feet jerks back against its binds. But he needs to understand.
It pulls strange: Another boy's steps, another man's shadow; someone else's drive. Cedric knows the taste of his own inquisition. What propels him forward now feels different.
A little more like hunger.
Darkness streams. The creature is too vast for the beetling arc it occupies, and the fear that spikes up through his lungs isn't Cedric's either. Awake, his eyes would find the joints of limbs and guess which way to twist; awake, he wouldn't wait to be caught.
(If we're caught, we’ll never know what's next.)
The shadow jerks, and Cedric steps over it, a smear on fine threshold. The fear isn't his, the hunger isn't, but Maker if they aren't: Sewn tight about some common thread. They deserve better, don't they? Better than tattered cloth and cold terror. They deserve to see,
Cedric stretches — not for knowledge, but a hand. Umber coats his fingers. When they look at the rings, he's searching for weakness, for the place where two things meet. Because it's a dream, they find it.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pls let me here
It's months before the experiment repeats. His nights are otherwise occupied. The walk to Kirkwall is long — the walk from his body, longer, and if practicality were all that ruled him maybe this wouldn't be worth the risk, but alone on the barren highlands of the Free Marches for weeks on end with nothing but goats and spirits for company, Caius keeps prodding at the idea like tongue at rotten tooth, and one night he goes back. A week later, again. It's sporadic, infrequent. It gets easier every time.
The face is never his again. Disguise is a skill he's still building — some nights the eyes are still his, the shapes of the fingers, a sliver of that young human boy's features reflected on the surface of a pool, but it's always the approximation of someone else who happens into Cedric's dreams. An elderly elf, a Chantry sister, a young dwarven pickpocket, a troublesome mage. One asshole merc bears a potentially familiar smirk; another stubborn companion is a literal mule, even if its mane keeps bursting into messy brown curls.
The circumstances change too, the mechanism of danger evolving as naturally and nonsensically as from any dream, but there's always a choice: one life or another. Yours or a stranger's. Yours or a mage's. A stranger's or a friend's. One night it's a spooked carthorse barreling toward a cliffside platform full of children or young human woman who looks remarkably like Gwenaëlle, and Caius considers whether he ought to be keeping a tally.
Tonight, it's late before the dream even begins. He shouldn't be out like this, tired and soul-worn and far from his body after another night wasted interrogating spirits who have no answers but the ones plucked from his own mind — and he realizes that fact at precisely the moment he pulls Cedric from his own dream, into someplace he didn't intend.
A library creaks into focus. Old, dusty, small enough to fit in one room of the modest Tevene manor it inhabits, but still large enough to accommodate a sunken clear space at its center, strewn with parchment and scrolls, chalk and ash. Candlelight makes for poor lighting; shadows loom. Something else looms within them.
no
Sometimes it's worse, sending folks to the grave with no time to think, only fumbling later for a reason. Gwen'd kill him if he let a kid come to harm. Vanya's a soldier, he knows the risks —
There are times that reason fails. Fifi's lighter than Gela, but she's not the one he hauls up a cliff. There are times he gets angry, curses what's coming. The longer they're at it, the Fade bends toward Caius, expectant. Already pressed to shape.
One night, there's a sacked town; an old man straining for a spell. There are orders. Another: Enemies above, a trapped street below. An injured woman, and a Rift that must be shut.
Choices. Fight, kill. Die, choose. Sporadic, infrequent, and he can tell a little now when it's coming; a ripple in the nerves that wrap his ear. A shift of that great hum. When he steps into the stables tonight, he isn't surprised to find them a library.
The light draws him as a moth. At the edge of awareness, his sleeves rearrange themselves. Cedric looks past the books, hunting ash and pattern.
no subject
Light, ash, pattern. The lattermost is as much felt as seen, the lines as indistinct as in any sleep haze but still known, recognition cementing inch by inch. Barrier glyphs encircle the outermost edge. A few feet in, with room to stand between, another barrier trails round something more elaborate.
It's complex, and hard to quite see around the mountain of cloak that unfurls out of the darkness above it. A towering figure hunches into the back half of the room. One long arm snaps out from under fabric, unfolding at an elbow, then another elbow, to concertina a stick of red chalk across that elaborate design.
It doesn't notice Cedric. Its attention is fixed on the book in front of it, the ritual at its many fingertips, and not the boy sneaking in for a closer look — but for how long? It feels so important, vital, that he see this final piece, but the risk of drawing this creature's attention turns the air in his lungs to ice. His breath leaves white trails in the air.
He'll be seen. He'll be caught. The shadow tethered to his feet jerks back against its binds. But he needs to understand.
https://media.tenor.com/UsIgy-qrPX8AAAAM/simba-lion.gif
A little more like hunger.
Darkness streams. The creature is too vast for the beetling arc it occupies, and the fear that spikes up through his lungs isn't Cedric's either. Awake, his eyes would find the joints of limbs and guess which way to twist; awake, he wouldn't wait to be caught.
(If we're caught, we’ll never know what's next.)
The shadow jerks, and Cedric steps over it, a smear on fine threshold. The fear isn't his, the hunger isn't, but Maker if they aren't: Sewn tight about some common thread. They deserve better, don't they? Better than tattered cloth and cold terror. They deserve to see,
Cedric stretches — not for knowledge, but a hand. Umber coats his fingers. When they look at the rings, he's searching for weakness, for the place where two things meet. Because it's a dream, they find it.
Because it's a dream, he reaches out to write.