dragons with wicked eyes and wicked hearts; (OPEN)

[revocation]

Who| Cullen and Dorian; Cullen and YOU!
What| So a medieval fantasy knight walks into Panem...
Where| All around the tribute tower, possibly in the city itself! He's exploring and trying to figure out wtf is going on.
When| The first week or so after the end of the arena.
Warnings/Notes| Uhhhh... possibly some spoilers for Dragon Age Inquisition...? I can put him just about anywhere, so feel free to just toss up a location. If you're not sure if he'd be somewhere, feel free to PM me or ping me on plurk (frodabaggins)!

The place he wakes up in is no less surreal than the dark metal monstrosity he left, though it's obviously cleaner and more brightly lit - less overtly dangerous. It's all shiny, flat surfaces, with metal and glass and strange materials he doesn't recognize. No stonework, no masonry, no crenelations or battlements. Just strange flat squares showing moving images in practically every room. There must be some powerful magic at work here, to be able to light whole buildings with no candles that he can see, and make those framed faces talk.

He spends some time looking for his armor, for his sword, but he can't for the life of him find any of it - makes sense, he supposes, that their captors would want to remove his weapons, his outward defenses. Even though, as far as he can tell, he's free to move about the place as he wishes. No one tries to stop him.

In the kitchen area, he finds a box filled with cold food - more magic? And he pokes at strange boxes with buttons on them that look nothing like any oven he's ever seen before. At the elevator bank, he can be seen examining the doors and panels with a confused expression on his face, his brow furrowed slightly. Eventually, he finds his way to the training room, where there are actually weapons he recognizes, at least, even if much of it is still strange and alien to him. In the city itself, he is nearly overwhelmed by the number of people. The outrageous fashions remind him a little of Orlais, and when strangers approach him in the street to gawk and ask him questions he looks incredibly uncomfortable.

There isn't even a proper Chantry in this place.

Comments

[revocation]

Cullen is still trying to piece together the bit about the moving box, frowning at it darkly as though if he does so long enough, it might explain itself.

So it takes him a moment to let those last words sink in.

"Wait, what?" He turns, giving Dorian a baffled look.

[tevintage]

He knew it would sink in eventually - it was a painful admission, and one he knew Cullen wouldn't work out on his own.

"There is nothing. I cannot feel the Fade, here, let alone draw from it. In the.. Arena.. There was something there, something not quite right but something that worked. Here, it is..."

He trailed off, his brows furrowed deeply.

"Here I may as well be a merchant's horse, for all the power available to me."

[revocation]

Cullen looks at Dorian almost as though he's just grown another head. He may as well have, for how shocking that information is.

"That's - that's impossible. The only way to sever someone's connection to the Fade is to make them Tranquil," he says bluntly. And Dorian is no Tranquil - Cullen knows the - the feel of a Tranquil from a mile away.

[tevintage]

"You mean strip them of all their humanity?" Dorian asks, a little testily, as if he didn't know when he couldn't do magic. "Yes, I'm well aware of what's impossible in Thedas," he says, accentuating the word.

"Whether or not it is impossible, it is true. If I had any capability, at the moment, do you really think I would remain so passively captured?"

[revocation]

Cullen just shakes his head a little, not in any position to argue with the Tevinter about the relative merits of the Rite of Tranquility. Certainly not here and now.

Okay, so Dorian has - somehow - been stripped of his magic while retaining his emotions. Cullen rubs irritably at a spot between his eyes, trying to think this through with the pain starting to build.

"Is it something about this place, then? If we managed to find a way back to Thedas - would that fix it, or should we be looking for a way to return your magic to you here?"

There's nothing here actively nullifying magic that Cullen can sense - nothing recognizable as such, anyway. And he would know. He is intimately familiar with ways of doing that, and if any lyrium was in use, he would know that, too. He would hear it, feel it in his blood, singing. There is none. Small favors.

[tevintage]

Normally he wouldn't immediately jump on the idea of Tranquility quite so aggressively, but being stripped of Magic has left him completely unbalanced and more than a little upset - something he can focus on much more clearly, now, that he wasn't beside himself with worry for the Inquisitor.

"I could not begin to guess," he said, each word almost a whip crack. It wasn't Cullen's fault, and he was trying not to take it out on him, but he had no idea what to do without it. "When I-- when they first brought me here, I assumed it was being - suppressed. By something. But in the Arena, it was there. I could feel it, use it... Once I woke up here?" He made a 'poof!' motion with his hands.

"They must have something they can use to block it completely, when they wish to, but allow me access if it suits them. Or, it is just here, in this city, where I have no access to my magic."

[revocation]

Cullen can't really blame the man. He knows what it is to feel powerless, stripped bare and vulnerable and not knowing how to fix it. He's never had magic at his disposal, but he knows the feeling, all too well.

A few years ago, this same situation might've sent him into a panic attack. Now, it's simply giving him a huge headache. Or maybe that's just the bright lights.

"There's nothing here that I'm familiar with," he says quietly. "No lyrium in use, no suppressants a Templar would know." He is, quite frankly, at a loss.

[asunders]

It turns out that they don't need to find Cole, because he'll find them. He's been wandering aimlessly around the city ever since he woke up again, the wide brim of his hat pulled firmly over his eyes. His feet make more noise when he walks. His body feels heavier. And there's nothing to take up space in his head except his own thoughts.

Even still, he's more quiet than your average person. And he finds himself standing behind Dorian and Cullen as they speak, listening intently for a moment before he finally says something.

"Is this what it's like to be human? In Thedas, I was...something else. Never quite a person, but I was learning. How to be unbound, unbidden. Varric was teaching me. But now..."

He trails off for a moment, thoughtful. His hand goes to his stomach and the new ( clean ) clothes they put him in.

"Now... I'm hungry. I've never had to eat before."

[tevintage]

Dorian had been so intent in his rage, so precise in his anger, that he absolutely had not been paying attention enough to notice when Cole somehow materialized at their side. He nearly jumped out of his skin when the voice joined them (Cole had a habit of doing that), but in approximately half a second he was reaching out, taking Cole's shoulders firmly and patting him down as if he half expected that he wasn't there.

But he was. He was very much there. As real and solid as anything else he'd ever known.

"See?" He said, his voice taking a slightly higher pitch as he turned to Cullen. "He has to eat. He has to eat!" As if it was the most ludicrous thing he'd ever heard.

[revocation]

Cullen, for his part, is a little startled at the spirit's sudden appearance, too, and if anything, he frowns even more deeply than before at the information.

"All right - calm down, Dorian. If we stay calm, we have a better chance of working this out. Now - it seems something has been done to your connection to the Fade - and Cole's, perhaps. If it has something to do with where we are, then getting home should set everything right again."

[asunders]

Cole understands. Dorian revels in being a mage. His connection to the fade, his power. Others fear such things, but he bends those forces to his will. He makes it his own. To have lost that must be a terrible thing, but he's not sure what to say. He keeps quiet as the mage pats him down, staying still throughout it even though he sort of wants to squirm away.

"I hear my own thoughts, but I don't hear anything else," he says, nodding in agreement. They've...changed him. Cut him off from something that he used to be. Shoved him into a box that he was never meant to occupy. It's the same with Cullen and Dorian.

[tevintage]

He lets go of Cole's shoulders only to draw up his own, his expression stern.

"I am perfectly calm," he says, completely inaccurately. "And while yes, returning home would obviously be the plan that all of us, I think, could agree with, I hate to point out that we're not anywhere in Thedas."

He drew in a tight breath. "From what I've managed to gather weren't not even in the same world, or the same time. If some magic has brought us this far, the only way to get back would be to return the way we came - and even that sounds fairly impossible, if we have no idea how far the way back is. Or what was used, or how they did it. And - and - if we were to try to return, would we--" He cut himself off, piercing his lips.

"Would we just be leading them back to a better prize?"

[revocation]

"I am aware of that," Cullen says, Dorian's temper finally starting to grate on his nerves a bit. It is pretty obvious they're not in Thedas anymore, whatever that means, however it happened. He sighs again, rubbing at the bridge of his nose as he begins pacing. He always thinks best on his feet.

He could use Leliana's advice right about now. He's a soldier, but it seems more and more like subterfuge is going to be needed.

"What would you suggest, then? We sit back and allow this to stand? We can't just - stay here."

[asunders]

Dorian is angry. Of course, that's easy to tell even without being able to dip into his mind whenever he'd like. Dorian is angry because he is scared, and Cullen is searching for a way to deliver them out of this because that is what he does. He's a hero, like in one of Varric's stories. But he doesn't have a plan, none of them do.

Cole doesn't know how to help.

"We're not going to stay here," he interjects, his voice low and quiet. Focusing his attention on Dorian for the moment because he's the one who is the most visibly upset. "But she isn't here. She matters. She can lead them."

Which isn't to say that they don't matter, but. The Inquisitor is the one they need to lead them against Corypheus.

Cole was never a spirit of faith, but he tries.

[tevintage]

He had been about to bite something hotly back to Cullen, but Cole interrupted before he could, and the confusion across Dorian's face was almost immediately.

"Who- Cassandra? Maker bless her but I should very well hope the Inquisitor is there too, or without Cullen--"

[revocation]

"Of course the Inquisitor is there," Cullen says, and it's almost a snap of his own temper. Revealing a bit of his own concern about it. "She is there, and she is safe. As safe as it's possible to be, anyway."

At Skyhold, at least. Skyhold is as safe as anywhere in Thedas, Cullen has been making sure of that, with the help of the builders and engineers they've been picking up over the past months. "She's safe," he repeats, because he needs to believe it.

[tevintage]

The colour, and the heat, drained from Dorian's face. She. She. This mythical 'she' wasn't Cassandra, they meant the inquisitor. But that was impossible. The inquisitor---

"He's safe," Dorian said, his voice strangely quiet. He'd gone completely still. "You mean he is safe."

[revocation]

"What?" Cullen looks at Dorian, confused again. Did he hit his head or something?

"I can assure you, I meant she. I'm - aware of the Herald's gender." As though Dorian didn't tease him incessantly about it over their chess games. Nice try, Pavus.

[tevintage]

It was, he would realise later, the worst he had felt since being dragged to this insane place. He'd lost his magic, killed, been blown up, kidnapped, dragged so far from home nothing was recognizable --

But it was this moment, that was the worst.

"So am I," he said, faintly, but his voice was far away, somewhere else, his mind spinning. If he'd been Cullen, perhaps he would have just continued to argue - completely ridiculous - the Inquisitor couldn't suddenly just change, couldn't suddenly be a different person--

But Dorian wasn't Cullen.

Dorian knew all too well that the Inquisitor - or, at least, the person granted the Inquisitor's power - could very well have been someone else. All it would have had to take was someone else walking through that door. Someone else interrupting.

And history would have to be completely rewritten.

Everything he knew would be lost.

The wave of nausea hit him so hard and so suddenly it nearly knocked him over - but instead he reached out, gripping the back of a couch and bracing himself against it, trying to get his mind to slow down.

"... What else?" He said finally, quietly. "What else is the Inquisitor? Beyond a - a she?"

[revocation]

Cullen is very confused by now. He's a straightforward man by nature, he's not stupid, but he's not terribly subtle, and Dorian's flights of fancy can sometimes border on the ludicrous - or at least, this one seems to.

"What do you mean, what else? Inquisitor Trevelyan, formerly of the Ostwick Circle of Magi, Herald of Andraste, defeater of the rebel mages, et cetera. What are you on about?"

[tevintage]

"So he's gone," Dorian murmured, almost to himself, ignoring Cullen's question. What was there to say? "Something... Somehow, someone changed it, and he's just... gone."

Somehow. As if he didn't know the how. As if he didn't know the only how that could be responsible.

As if that guilt wasn't his.

He paused and looked up to meet Cullen's eye. "To you, Inquisitor Lavellen never even existed. Did he."

[revocation]

Lavellan?

Even Cullen can sense that there's something very wrong here. He's not sure what, aside from the obvious - that Dorian seems to remember a very different Inquisitor than the one he knows and - well, loves.

"I don't know of anyone by that name, no," he says truthfully. He suddenly feels like a bit of an arse for it, though, and he looks to Cole, almost as though to say what did I do?