entrancelogs | [OPEN/EVENT] Time was thrown at the wind;

Entry tags:

[OPEN/EVENT] Time was thrown at the wind;

Who: Dorian Pavus & you!
Where: The gardens, then throughout the mansion and grounds.
When: 9/16 - 9/20
Rating: R, probably.
Summary: Dorian returns from his long visit home on the 16th, and is welcomed back by a nasty event the day afterwards. Splendid work, Wonderland! This log will have heavy spoilers for DA:I Trespasser, as a note to those who would prefer to avoid them.
The Story:

When Dorian awakes in the gardens, Dorian idly wonders if this is going to become a running theme-- for a few moments, he thinks he might be dreaming, but his memories of Wonderland come rushing back all at once. He'd only spent two months here before going home, if that, but those memories return as bright and vivid as though it's only been days since he left.

It hasn't. It's been much longer-- two years, and it feels even longer than that. 'Feels like ten,' he'd told Brennan when they'd met again at Halamshiral, forced to admit that after all that had happened, he felt old, tired, then quickly swept it under the rug with a series of jokes and irreverent remarks to try pretend the news from home didn't weigh on him quite so heavily. Brennan had known better, but he liked to think that some of their friends were fooled. Perhaps not. They'd all had ample time to get to know him, but it made him feel better, in part, to assume otherwise.

Once he regains his bearings, he's quick to make his way back towards the mansion. He looks different from the Dorian who had departed only a week before; aside from the change in his attire, he does look older, having gained a few more lines around his eyes, and his hair has just begun to grow out of the short crop he'd kept it in for so long, unkempt after the long, tireless haul through the Eluvians that still felt so surreal a part of him couldn't even be sure that it happened-- a small part, because the smell of blood and gaatlok and the bite of Qunari steel were too sharp in his memory to be anything but real.

He has to find Brennan. If Dorian has returned to this place, then Brennan must have, also, or so he wishes to believe. Too much has happened for them to be separated again now. Nearly two years apart had been trying enough, but now the Inquisitor needed his companions at his side, perhaps more than ever, and while business at home would be quick to steal Dorian back to Tevinter, here there was no such issue. Here he could help, see if Wonderland bought them more time to deal with this new problem that had been dropped in their laps.

On the 16th, he'll be quick to make his way to the room he shares with Brennan on the third floor, but can easily be caught making his way through the gardens or entrance hall before he reaches it, looking far more harried than usual. Later in the day, he can be found in kitchen or dining hall, and will be spending the early evening hours at a table in the library with a number of books laid out before him, though it's unlikely he'll be permitted to work late considering his week-long absence.

When the 17th rolls around, the curse will effect him the same as everyone else. The strangely darkened sky will catch his interest, and he's outdoors in the gardens when the curse itself strikes-- at 6:20 PM, he'll be caught in the downpour of cursed shards and the spell will take hold. He doesn't know many people in Wonderland well enough to have even minor grievances to be amplified-- but there are also those he does, few though they may be. To them, the curse will be especially unkind.

(OOC: Prose or action are both a-ok, I'll match you! If you want to run into Dorian on the 16th, feel free to intercept him before he finds Brennan or catch him in the evening in any of the common areas. For the Shattered Sight event, he'll be available throughout the mansion and grounds on various days if your character wants to encounter him, just put the location in the subject title! If you'd like to plot something more specific, toss me a PM or hit me up at

necrofancy.)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

It's on the tip of his tongue to argue more, but he knows that stubborn expression on his lover's face, so he just sighs, letting his head tip forward until he rests it against Dorian's forehead. "Fine. We'll discuss it more later when we actually... are there to deal with it. But if you think for a moment I'm letting you walk back into that political minefield alone, you haven't been paying attention. Corypheus is dead. The Inquisition can handle things without me for a little while."

"As if I could ask you to follow me into that kind of danger." It's a token sort of protest, because Dorian knows he's not the only one of them who's impossibly stubborn-- nor would he be able to weather being apart for so long, not again, not when they've already spent the better part of two years apart from Dorian's perspective. Letters were hardly enough to make up for the time they'd lost.

He sighs in turn, letting his brow rest against Brennan's, setting his jaw as he refuses to pull away, letting warmth and closeness comfort him instead, silence settling over the pair of them for a few short moments.

"It's not a concern as long as we're here," he agrees softly, "But there is more that you should know, amatus."

"You don't have to ask," Brennan answers softly, cupping his hand warmly against the nape of Dorian's neck, a faint smile twitching at the very corner of his lips. "Besides, when have you ever hesitated to follow me into worse? Even if it involved swamps and mosquitoes and a dragon or three."

And the idea of facing any of it without Dorian at his side is depressing at best. As far as he's concerned, the matter is settled, because there's pretty much nothing that could keep him from his lover's side for an extended period of time.

Still, he waits patiently when Dorian segue's into that, holding his breath, because if this is the news Dorian chose to start with, he can only imagine it gets worse from there. Maker.

"The Exalted Council?" he guesses, his tone quiet. And very dry. "I can imagine that was a bit of a clusterfuck. Our favorite kind of politics."

"The only kind we seem to have any exposure to anymore," Dorian agrees with a wry smile, one that doesn't quite reach his eyes, the weight of his father's death apparent now that he'd shared it.

"The Council itself was bad enough, with Ferelden and Orlais both demanding different things from the Inquisition, but an outside party decided to-- intervene. Sabotage," he goes on to explain, grim. "We've been infiltrated by Qunari spies."

Brennan slides his fingers along his lover's jaw soothingly, pressing a kiss to the corner of his lips, still able to see the sadness lingering in his gaze all too easily. But he lets Dorian continue with his explanation, hoping maybe that at least will prove a distraction for the moment.

And it's a hell of a distraction, as Brennan sits up straight and shoots him a startled look. "Qunari?" he echoes, looking bewildered. "I thought they were busy with Tevinter. What in the Void are they doing that far south?"

"It's not just the south," Dorian corrects him, his expression grave as he takes on a warning tone. "They've gained access to the Eluvians-- the ability to come and go as they please, on top of whatever eyes and ears they have posted within our ranks. The Inquisition has been deemed a threat by the Viddasala-- it was not a united or fully sanctioned attack, but that matters little, considering how formidable their forces are. She was obsessed with the Mark on your hand."

"But I thought the Qunari hated magic," Brennan looks bewildered a moment. Granted, he only knows bits and pieces about their culture, but he's seen what they do to their Saarebas. And Bull was pretty strong in his feelings about 'magic crap'. "Why would they use Eluvians? And how did they find them? I thought they were almost all destroyed? We had to hike halfway across the continent to find one, and even then, they all had specific keys, didn't they?"

Apparently there was more Morrigan hadn't told him.

At least the obsession with his Mark wasn't anything new. He just snorts quietly. "Yeah, well. Someone tell her to get in line."

"Apparently they'll make exceptions for something useful," Dorian replies grimly, shaking his head. He wishes he knew every detail of what had happened, but they'd all been so caught up in the center of it that there was only so much he'd been able to learn. "The key to each Eluvian is different-- but it would appear sometimes power is enough."

And power was something they'd had in spades. He tenses for a moment then, glancing at Brennan's hand before taking it between his own, covering the glow of the Mark.

"There is-- something more."

"Isn't there always?" Brennan scoffs lightly. "It's never just one thing when it can be a dozen crashing down around us at once, after all."

Although there's something in Dorian's expression that has him letting the humor drift away, meeting his gaze seriously once more. He turns his hand, threading his fingers with his lover's as he holds his gaze, patient and waiting. "Tell me, Dorian," he says, because he's starting to get more than a little worried now.

What could be worse than assassins and rampaging Qunari?

Were they discussing anything else, Dorian would have been right there with him, cracking jokes and being as flippant as he could possibly make himself, a tried-and-true method of easing his own worry as well as that of those around him. Now, he could not pretend. There were very few things so serious that he could not make light of them, but this was most certainly one of them.

"Your Mark," he begins slowly, his gaze darkening as his frowns, dark brows drawing downwards. "It's begun to grow out of control. We had feared it might be the end of you. I thought--"

He cuts himself off, just for a moment.

I knew you'd break my heart, you bloody bastard.

"I had never seen you in so much pain. You survived, but-- there was a price, amatus."

Brennan goes still as Dorian explains, his gaze dropping to his hand, now carefully covered by Dorian's grip and he swallows, absorbing that knowledge. He gives Dorian's hand a light squeeze, realizing that for the first time accompanying Dorian back home might be an option. That keeping his lover safe might be impossible when he apparently can't even protect himself.

"I always knew it was a possibility," he confesses softly, not meeting Dorian's gaze, because this is not a conversation they've had before - at least not in his memory. It's not something he's wanted to bring up to anyone, and in truth he's only had it with one person. The one person who understood the Anchor as well, if not better, than he did.

"It was killing me when I first got it, when I first fell out of the Fade. It was unstable, reacting to the Breach. To be honest, I shouldn't have survived it then. If Solas hadn't been there to find a way to stabilize it when I sealed the Breach, you and I would have never met. But he's gone still, isn't he? And I don't have the means to stabilize it on my own. And if it's going out of control..."

Maker. The knowledge of the havoc his Mark could wreck if he could no longer control it... He would be too dangerous to remain around anyone. And while Dorian had reassured him that he had survived...

"What was the price, Dorian? What have I done?"

Even if they'd never spoken of it, Dorian had knows. They all knew-- the story of how the Herald had been found at the Temple of Sacred Ashes had already been legend by the time he arrived, and that included talk of the Anchor's effect, the fact that it had nearly killed him before the breach had been stabilized. It hadn't been a stretch to imagine that the Mark could change and do harm once more, but they had all become so used to things as they were--

He had never given it much thought, to be perfectly honest, and whatever rumors he'd heard before now, it was something else entirely to hear it from Brennan himself.

"No," Dorian corrects him with a shake of his head, his mouth a grim, humorless line, nothing like what Brennan had come to expect from him. "He's returned, if only briefly. And it's not what you've done."

It was what he had lost, instead. Dorian exhales slowly, collecting himself.

"The Anchor was out of control. You were running out of time. I wasn't there when you went to meet with Solas, the rest of us were left behind, but when you returned-- the Anchor was gone, but your hand was too badly damaged to save."

Brennan goes still at those words, rocked by the understanding of them, and for a moment he couldn't breathe, something tight and choking gripping at his lungs. It struggles between panic and despair, a wave of grief that has him closing his eyes, hand spasming around the Anchor as he curls his finger into a fist for a moment, grip tight, white-knuckled.

Then he exhales, diverting his gaze across the room as he lets his mind wander past the sheer loss implied in that statement and looking for something else to focus on than what that will mean for him.

"He found a way to remove it," he breathes, sounding slightly wondering and slightly worried. "I didn't think it was possible. After Corypheus tried and failed, and then the orb was shattered... I thought it would be permanent. This... Maker." He trails off, running out of words as he lifts his other hand to rub across his face, overwhelmed by this information. "His timing is still as impeccable as always, I see."

"Perhaps he always knew how, he simply lacked the power." His frown persists, dark eyebrows drawn downwards, and he knows that they've come to a dangerous twist in the plot, one he simply can't keep to himself and yet isn't quite sure how to breach and give it the proper weight it deserves.

To be perfectly honest, he's still not quite sure how he feels about it.

"The Anchor," he begins again, his voice soft, his words chosen with care, "It was his to begin with. Solas is-- not who we thought he was, though it seemed that he never meant for things to happen the way they did. How much of that is true, I can't say. I'm not certain anyone can."

Brennan goes carefully still at those words, his hand dropping back to his lap as he gives Dorian a narrow-eyed stare. Things with Solas had been tense and worrisome ever since the mage had vanished after the fight against Corypheus, without so much as a goodbye or an explanation. He'd been trying to give the man the benefit of the doubt, but...

"What do you mean?"

"You remember that he told us the orb was an ancient elven artifact. The anchor was the key. Both-- belonged to Solas." He exhales slowly. Brennan will need more context than that, but there's so much to tell that he supposes he ought to just have out with it, let Brennan ask whatever questions might follow as he will. "He is none other than Fen'Harel. Responsible for the creation of the veil between the Fade and the mortal realm."

"Fen'harel?!"

Brennan absorbs that information with a shocked look, trying to reconcile the Solas he knew from the elvhen of legend. And he.... he created the Veil?

The Inquisitor abruptly pushed himself to his feet, rocked to the core and needing to move. He turns, pacing the length of the room, needing the motion to help him sort through the puzzle pieces that were slowly and dreadfully clicking into place. Solas's vast amount of knowledge on the Fade, on spirits, on ancient ruins and the misconceptions of ancient elves. The conversations they'd had about changing the world and the consequences tied into it. The words he'd exchanged with the Sentinel in Mythal's temple.

"Maker... How... How is that even possible? Solas? But he fought with us against Corypheus. Are you saying this... this was all his doing?"

It felt like a betrayal, one that rocked him to the core, far deeper than what he'd discovered about Blackwall when it was revealed the man was not who he'd said. But this...

It was not supposed to happen this way. Those had been some of the final words he'd said to Brennan before he vanished. He hadn't understood at the time, but now...

"I wish I could say with confidence that I had the answers," Dorian offers grimly-- there hadn't been time for the Brennan he'd left in Halamshiral to explain everything in detail, not with the pressing matters of his damaged hand and the council itself, but even if there had, he's not certain he would have learned more. Solas had ever been fond of secrets, after all, and his explanations were always conveniently vague to suit his needs, for as long-winded as they had the potential to be.

"What happened with Corypheus didn't seem to be his intent-- and yet I can't say whether or not what he does intend is any better."

"Do we know what he intends?" Brennan asks, pausing in his pacing long enough to shoot Dorian a searching look. Oh, the things he's going to obsess over now. Not that it will do him any good, trapped her as he is, his hands tied. At least he still has both of them to tie, he supposes, shaking his head with a wry grimace.

"Maker. Right when I hoped we'd earned a measure of peace for a while."

"We do."

And for the life of him, Dorian wishes that they didn't. He wishes he hadn't come back with this knowledge in tow, wishes he could keep it to himself, but he can't-- Brennan needs to know, and even if Dorian had tried to keep it secret, he knows he would have failed. Brennan could read him in ways no one else had ever been able to.

He exhales slowly, his expression remaining somber, brow creased with worry as his dark eyebrows knit together.

"He intends to restore the world as it once was-- by bringing down the Veil."

That stops Brennan in his tracks, his restless pacing forgotten as he turns and stares at his lover. For a moment, he's rendered completely speechless by the announcement, brain fumbling over how bloody terrible that would be.

"But he helped us close all the bloody rifts and they were bad enough! What does he think is going to happen to everyone if he tears down the whole sodding Veil at once? It would be..."

A disaster. Something that would make the Breach opening above the Conclave seem like a triviality.

He shakes his head, unable to believe it. "That can't be right, Dorian. Not Solas. Something must be wrong. He might be strange, yes, but to cause such unimagined destruction and chaos... I do not believe that of him. I can't. Why would he even want such a thing?" He loves the Fade more than anyone I've ever met, and the spirits that inhabit it. He's not only endangering everyone on our side of the Veil, but his companions on the other. What in the Maker's name is he thinking?"

"All I know is what you told me," Dorian reminds him gently, though there's a mournful note behind his words all the same. "I wasn't with you when you spoke to him, and there wasn't much time to talk due to your needing tending to-- but what you were able to tell me, you didn't seem angry. Concerned. Determined to stop it, but also determined to change his mind."

He frowns again, shaking his head once as he reaches out to lace his fingers through Brennan's, the warm, secure grip as much for him as it was for Brennan himself.

"The impression you gave me was that he seems to think he's righting a great wrong. Even so, we cannot let it come to bear."

Brennan frowns and gives Dorian's hand a light squeeze before tearing it free and going back to pacing the room, needing to move, too restless to stay still. He falls silent for several long moments, needing the time to piece through the information he's given. It's not like the reports he gets to update back home but this... this is more personal than any small problem he has to delegate aid to, or one he can solve with sword or coercion.

He doesn't know what to think of it.

Finally he stops and sighs, raking his fingers through his hair again. "Maker. What a mess. And there's nothing I can do about it either. Not from here. Not like this." He pauses then and turns back to Dorian, giving him an apologetic glance. "I'd hoped your trip home would have been one more pleasant than this. I'm sorry it wasn't."

Dorian watches him for several moments, leaning forward to clasp his hands together and rest his weight against his knees, considering. Was there anymore more he could say to make this easier to process? Anything he might have done better to keep to himself? He's certain the answer to the latter is no, secrets would do them no favors, and he owed Brennan more than that. For all they'd been through, he deserved better. He deserved the truth, no matter how unpleasant.

"I'm not certain anyone who returns to Thedas is in for a pleasant trip back home," Dorian reasons with a faint smile, only managing to be halfway teasing. "Our time here has put what our world has been through into sharp relief, as it were. I'm sorry I don't have better news for you." Because he would have wanted nothing more than to come back and tell him that peace had been maintained, that Ferelden and Orlais were rebuilding and stronger than ever, that the Inquisition was appreciated for all it had done.

"You're right. There's nothing to be done about any of it from here, but-- I thought you should know, all the same."

Brennan comes back then, sinking down onto his knee in front of Dorian as he catches his hands in his own and leans up to kiss him, his expression uncommonly serious.

"I'm glad you told me," he answers, giving Dorian's hands a light squeeze. "And I'm glad you're safe, relatively speaking. We'll figure out the rest. It's what we do, right? No matter what weird shit the fates or the would-be-gods decide to throw at us next. We'll handle it. In the meantime I intend to enjoy the time we have here, strange as that may be." He pauses, but gives Dorian a serious look again. "I am sorry about your father though, Dorian. I know things were still... complicated."

[OPEN/EVENT] Time was thrown at the wind;

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