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The bustling market bazaar of the Crossroads attracted a large variety of people, with a larger variety of wares. The mortals weren't entirely sure what the spirit vendors actually did with their coin -- or even from where they got their items -- but they offered a service, and perhaps that was all they needed to know. Some things are best left well enough alone.
A young elven messenger sat cross-legged on a box near the centre; she shoveled half a sandwich into her mouth as she inspected her pack, checking and double checking she had everything she needed for the journey home. She kept one eye on the small horde of wisps surrounding her, which bobbed and weaved through the air playfully as they whispered what could only be described as "gossip," if they understood what that meant.
Satisfied that she was ready to move, she inhaled the remainder of her sandwich and picked herself up from the box, dusting herself down.
A dull ache hit her senses as she was about to start walking, and the atmosphere in the market seemed to slow, almost to a standstill. The wisps hovered around her, chittering in concern.
Something was wrong.
The wisps lit up one by one, a bright, fiery yellow, trilling shrilly in agitation. No one else seemed to notice -- or care -- so the wisps all but pushed the messenger towards one of the arches leading away from the market, where she noticed a gentle shimmer in the fabric of the Fade.
She sighed. Not again.
Some of the wisps tugged on her sleeve, urging her down a path towards some mostly unused eluvians. Two of them were broken, their shattered shards strewn across the ground, glinting dully in the Fade's false light. One of them looked inactive; where one may have expected a reflection of the world past its glass, it was instead obsidian black, but it still had a faint magical sheen.
The one closest to the island's edge looked active, and upon further inspection, there was movement from within. She could see golden leaves gently swaying on silver birch trees, and the occasional flash of bright light. There were distant figures, clad in black, one of them towering above the rest.
The wisps pulsed gently as they hovered around the eluvian, a vibrant array of dangerous colours. One of them flew back and forth between the eluvian and the messenger, chittering insistently.
It seemed obvious what they wanted her to do; she took a deep, steadying breath, and stepped through the eluvian.
The cool autumn air of Arlathan Forest hit her immediately, wafting the stench of burnt flesh and fabric on the breeze. A group of Venatori broke ranks in a panic as their robes erupted in plumes of blue fire, and they frantically patted themselves down in a futile attempt to quash the flames. Most of them dropped to the ground after a few moments, the kindling to their own funeral pyres.
The largest of the figures ahead stood a head and shoulders above the rest, covered head to toe in shaggy black fur. A werewolf. The messenger had only seen him once before, and never in his beast form, but she recognised the dizzying smell of his odd magic immediately; she knew it was the stranger from the Lighthouse from before.
She hesitated; he seemed to be doing fine on his own, and she was still quite wary of him. More so, perhaps, now that he was no longer in human form.
The wolfman's ears pricked up, and one of them turned towards her -- he was definitely aware of her presence.
She took a moment to rub her nose, then quickly glanced back at the eluvian; it gave no reflection, and like the inactive one from before, gave off a dull, black sheen. Somehow, it had deactivated. She slowed her breathing and tried to focus; a prismatic shimmer in the air around them caught her eye. A Veil bubble.
"Shit," she muttered under her breath. "Shit."
The werewolf glanced back over his shoulder; his mouth hung open in what she guessed approximated a grin, his tongue lolling out of his mouth like a happy pup. He curled one of his hands loosely into a fist, and a blue spectral battleaxe took shape in his hands; he swung it in front of him, still looking back at the messenger, and took an advancing Venatori's head clean off their shoulders.
She almost laughed. "You're just showing off." Seeing no other way out, she shrugged and jogged forward to join him… while keeping him at a safe distance.
Was this really the same person? His entire attitude was different; even in this form, his showy demeanour was a far cry from the fiercely protective man from the Lighthouse.
"Obviously," he huffed, his voice coarse and gravelly. He turned to face her fully, with an expression that could arguably be described as bored; he turned the axe upside down, then planted its head into the ground and leaned on the pommel. A fiery aura curled around one of his clawed hands, and he released… something into the grass behind him. It didn't appear to do anything, whatever it was.
The messenger shot him a confused look, then her eyes widened in alarm as the few who remained alive attempted to sneak towards the wolfman. He casually inspected his claws as the rune he cast into the grass exploded violently, tossing their charred corpses into the air, and they hit the ground in a crumpled heap.
With an amused grunt, the werewolf rolled his neck and shoulders, and his fur melted away; his lupine snout shrank back to a bearded, human face, and his height dropped several feet. He tossed aside the ghostly axe he was leaning on to free his hands, and he roughly tucked his tunic into his sash; the forest rang out with a loud clang! as the axe hit the ground, which quickly cut off as it blinked out of existence.
"Mary Brithari Surana. A pleasure to see you again," he grinned, which Mary still found somehow unsettling even while he was human again. "Though I admit, I'm surprised. I expected last time to be a fluke."
"I thought so, too, but…" She blinked, and her brows furrowed. "I don't actually know your name. I never got a chance to ask."
"Jovus Hassildor, at your service." He took a sweeping bow. Show off. "So, are we in your world or mine?" He grimaced as soon as the words fell from his mouth; that entire sentence sounded insane.
"Yes? Neither? Both?"
"Right, well, I'm glad we cleared that up," Jovus snorted. He idly flexed his fingers and a blue dagger formed in his hand; he weaved it through his fingers a few times, then used it to pick at his nails.
Mary frowned; a proper explanation would take up too much time. "We're in a Veil bubble, so I'm not sure that logic really applies here."
"Oh good, here I was worried today was going to be dull," Jovus said, sarcastically. A brief shimmer in the air caught his eye; he frowned thoughtfully as he tracked it around the small clearing they stood in. "Alright, I'm not too proud to admit I'm out of my depth here. What do we need to do?"
Mary took a breath and focused; Jovus folded his arms across his chest and watched her expectantly. She nodded, like she had come to a decision, and started walking ahead, beckoning Jovus to follow. He closed his hand tightly around the dagger's hilt, and it disappeared.
"There should be an artifact -- or something -- at the centre of the bubble," she explained as she walked. Jovus matched her stride, listening intently. "It's holding the bubble in place. If we can get to that, the bubble should collapse, and we can go home."
"That sounds too simple." Jovus raised an eyebrow. "There's a catch."
"Knowing my luck, lately? Sure," Mary shrugged. "You could always try your luck going through the bubble, but I wouldn't recommend that."
"Didn't Bellara say doing that could be 'messy?'"
"Yeah, probably."
"I think I'll pass," Jovus laughed. "If I end up turning into pâté, I'm going to be very upset."
Jovus followed Mary diligently, every now and then giving the air an experimental sniff. They ducked under a fallen log, clambered over some ruined statues, and waded through a large puddle. A pair of nugs scrabbled at the dirt and burrowed into the ground.
By the time they'd reached a bark-strewn dirt path, Mary noted that despite his theatrical persona, Jovus barely made any sound when he moved. His leather boots creaked softly sometimes, or his loose-fitting clothing would gently rustle -- which in a forest could easily be mistaken for the leaves blowing in the breeze. If she ever lost sight of him, his footsteps were almost completely silent. That's not concerning at all.
Something shook her from her musing, and she stopped dead in her tracks; she yanked off one of her gloves and rubbed at an iron ring on her finger. Jovus' expression turned serious; he looked ahead and sniffed the air with a grimace.
"Darkspawn," they said in tandem, their voices low so as to not attract attention.
"Shit," Mary added, emphatically. She pulled her glove back on, and thought for a moment. "We might be able to sneak past them," she suggested. "There's a lot of them."
"Shouldn't we get rid of them?" Jovus asked. He gave her an incredulous look, keeping one eye on the path ahead for any stragglers.
"If we can get to the artifact…" she began, like she was explaining a plan out loud to herself. "If we can pick it up and get it back to the eluvian, the bubble should move with us. In theory, they'd get pushed outside it and die anyway."
"I'm not following. I was under the impression that moving something with that much power is a bad thing? Why the fuck would we do that?"
"Because if we deactivate it here we won't have time to get back before we get stuck," Mary said tiredly. "I'd rather avoid that, if it's all the same to you. We don't have much of a choice."
"Fair enough."
"Come on, we're wasting time." Mary crouched low and slowly started creeping up the path, careful to avoid any unnecessary noise. Jovus followed closely, his expression grimly focused; it seemed to come naturally to him.
The path opened out to a small, ruined courtyard. It was overgrown, and overrun; several quivering blight tendrils adorned the walls and floor, sucking the life out of the surrounding flora. A group of about a dozen mutated ghouls were kneeling around a bear carcass, ravenously stripping fur and flesh from its bones with sickening efficiency.
Jovus grimaced with disgust as they edged closer; the Blight truly reeks.
There was another shimmer in the air at the far end of the courtyard; the boundary of the Veil bubble. It didn't need to move too far to consume the small horde. They just needed to find the artifact keeping it in place.
They shuffled quietly towards a ruined tower; Mary thanked the spirits that one of the walls had collapsed just enough for them to squeeze inside, or else they'd have had to use the door, which opened directly to the mouths of several gluttonous ghouls. She breathed a sigh of relief when they made it inside, but Jovus was still eyeing the gap warily.
In the centre of the tower was a swirling vortex of floating books, almost as tall as the tower itself. The books' pages fluttered noisily as they whirled through the air -- all except for one, which appeared to be sealed shut with a pair of brass latches.
"That's got to be it!" Mary grabbed Jovus by the arm and pointed at the sealed book.
"So… what? Do we just take it or…?" Jovus whispered, watching the book rise and fall with the rest of the vortex.
Mary grunted an "I don't know." "I guess so? Can't see any other way to get it down. Probably not the best idea, but it's all we've got."
"Fantastic," Jovus sighed. He watched the book as it completed another lazy circuit through the air, and hesitantly touched it as it reached its lowest point, bobbing gently just above his head.
The vortex shuddered and groaned, and the books stopped in midair. The topmost books began to fall, each layer following as they passed, until the entire stack collapsed to the ground at once.
"Oh, shit."
"Oh, fuck."
Jovus and Mary exchanged horrified looks and held their breath, as they hoped that somehow the darkspawn were too preoccupied with their meal to care about the flurry of literature.
The air stilled, and an eerie silence fell. Fast footsteps approached the tower door, followed by the sound of claws scrabbling at wood as ghouls investigated the sudden sound, trying to break through.
The mottled face of a ghoul appeared in the gap where they entered the tower. It shrieked in rage as it tried to force its way inside. Jovus made a loose fist and a dagger appeared in his hand; he flicked it at the ghoul, and it embedded itself between the darkspawn's empty eyes, before it vanished. The ghoul fell backwards, dead.
Mary quickly searched the pile for the book they needed, and scooped it up. "Time to go!"
Jovus shoved himself through the gap in the wall, followed quickly by Mary, who clutched the book tightly to her chest. The horde of darkspawn at the door howled when they saw them, and scrambled clumsily over each other to try and reach the pair.
They tore down the path back towards the eluvian, Jovus occasionally having to slow down to keep pace with Mary. The ghouls that weren't busy tripping over each other took off at a run to catch up with them, hissing angrily with every step. They jogged around the puddle, pulled themselves over the rocks, and vaulted over the fallen log, all while gaining ground away from the encroaching darkspawn.
By the time they reached the clearing with the eluvian, the remaining ghouls got themselves stuck at the log. After one or two extra steps, and the pair could see a fountain of black ichor exploding into the air further back up the path; the ghouls had been ejected from the Veil bubble, with predictably messy results.
Between the two of them, they could sense no more darkspawn. They were in the clear, so allowed themselves a moment to catch their breath.
Mary inspected the book in her hand, now that the more obvious threat of immediate death had passed. It was a small tome, bound in plain black leather, and sealed with two brass latches, which seemed impossible to open. There didn't appear to be any clear way to unlock the latches, and she grunted with frustration when even magic didn't work.
Jovus held out his hand expectantly. "May I?"
Reluctantly, Mary handed the book to him. He flexed his hand, and thick black claws sprang from his fingertips, which he used to hook underneath the latches and prize them off.
He laughed to himself. "Emmrich would kill me if he saw me doing this." He handed the book back, with a satisfied hum.
"I won't tell him if you don't," Mary laughed. She inspected the book again, brows furrowed thoughtfully. "I guess we open it? Read it?" She took a deep breath and slowly, hesitantly opened the book. As she did so, the book slowly disintegrated; dust slipping through her fingers like the sand in an hourglass. The few pages she managed to glimpse before the book destroyed itself appeared to be blank. Jovus almost seemed disappointed.
The shimmer in the air became a quick flash of bright light as the bubble collapsed, and it was like air was rushing in to fill the space. Everything seemed louder, brighter, for a few moments, before reaching equilibrium.
The eluvian that brought them here flickered to life, and they could see the reflection of the Crossroads light up in its glass.
"Thank the spirits, that worked," Mary sighed in relief. "Well, we're not dead. I'll chalk that up as a win."
"Oh, I don't know. The day is still young. Give it time." Jovus laughed. "So, now what?"
"Now you need to go through the eluvian. You've got to go first."
Jovus wandered over to the eluvian and gently ghosted his fingers over it, causing ripples in the glass, like raindrops in a pond. He turned back to Mary to say his goodbyes. "Well, then," he closed his fist across his chest, and gave her a short bow. "Farewell, Mary Brithari Surana. It's been…" Weird. "Interesting." With a grin, he stepped back into the eluvian, and disappeared completely from view.
"Goodbye, Jovus," Mary said to the empty air. She stepped through the eluvian after him, and he was nowhere to be seen. Hopefully, he was back where he belonged.