Chapter Text
Look at those bags under your eyes, dude, I thought to myself, saving and quitting Dragon Age: Origins as the cutscene of Loghain brooding evilly ended. You need, like, a solid 8 hours of sleep a night and a good lay, and I swear, you'd stop making all these terrible decisions.
I opened up a forum to share this brilliant thought. New thread. "A ten minute talk early on, and the whole game would be different," I typed, nodding to myself. I was so right about this. I hit "submit" on the comment, but something went wrong with my computer--it flashed white. Like, really bright white. More light than my screen ought to be capable of generating. Blinded me for a second. And when I could see again...
I was not in my room anymore.
I've had a couple of experiences where, subsequently, I've wondered if I was hallucinating. Like, this one time I was positive that a bat had flown into my apartment, but I couldn't figure out how it got in and I never saw it leave so... maybe no bat. Using the bat incident as a touchstone, I noted more differences than similarities with my current situation. For example: the bat existed within the real, non-hallucinated world. It did not completely, wholly replace the real world.
But no part of this new room resembled my bedroom. It was much bigger than my room had been, for example. More rectangular than square, with high ceilings. It appeared to be made of different materials than my house. Dressed stone instead of plain old wood-frame and stucco. And the furniture, too. I had a desk and a bed in my room. This room contained a couple of big armchairs, kind of fancy, and a coffee table looking thing. Long and low and not meant for working.
I started to panic--quietly, without moving, pretty much just screaming internally--when the door opened and... oh. Oh, not good. A tall, angry-looking dude wearing shiny, clanky armor with two thin braids hanging down on either side of his face walked into the room.
All of a sudden, 'hallucinating' seemed like a best-case scenario. Because I knew that face and I knew what I'd just been typing and 'hallucinating' was far, far preferable to all the other options which sprang to mind. Chief among them: a deity with a cruel sense of humor.
Loghain drew his sword.
"Hello!' I said, as cheerfully as I could manage. I showed him my hands, palms out. "I was just leaving! Guess I got lost!" That was true. Always stick to the truth when babbling. "Sorry to disturb!"
I stood up and tried to sidle towards the door. I was still in the worn jeans and faded t-shirt I'd been wearing all day, though at least I had a bra on. That was a plus. Bet they don't have underwires in Ferelden.
"Try to run and you won't make it to the door," said Loghain.
I froze.
He opened his mouth again, turning his head just slightly--to project his voice behind him, I suspected--and I just knew the next word out of his mouth would be "Guards!" and the sentence to follow would be, "Take this interloper to the dungeon!" which was a sequence of events I very much wanted to avoid.
"Wait!" I waved my hands. I might have jumped up and down. "Wait, wait, let's just... chat. No need to call for backup, right? Look at me, I'm unarmed"--Which, shit. That could be a problem--"And I have no martial skills at all"--like, none, this is really not an ideal situation for me--"So we can deal with this peacefully, right?"
"Very well." He took a step toward me, raising his sword. "Tell me what mischief you have done, woman. If you confess, I will be merciful."
"One, I did no mischief." I tried to edge away from the blade. The point followed me, like I was a magnet. Ugh ugh ugh. "And two, I don't believe you. I think you have odd ideas about mercy."
What if the only way to end the hallucination would be to let Loghain kill me? Or, if not Loghain, someone or something else. It seemed like a logical enough theory, but I was not eager to test it.
"And so the 'peaceful' solution you proposed has failed, almost as soon as it was tried," said Loghain. "Now--"
"Okay, okay!" I tried to put a chair between myself and Loghain but, not surprisingly, he was way better at maneuvering himself into striking distance than I was at getting myself out of it. I had no practice. He had lots. Really not fair. "I may be here to... deliver a message... which you won't like... and I'd rather not, to be honest... but since it's starting to look like I'm dead either way..."
"A message from whom?" he interrupted.
"Good question," I muttered. I hadn't thought through who would give Loghain my excellent life advice, and I should have. A quick survey of the game characters told me that he wasn't likely to listen to anyone who was still alive. "Me, I guess. It's a message from me. Are you sure I can't just leave? It's not very interesting."
"Enough," said Loghain, glancing behind me. Out the window, where it was too dark to see much. "It is late, and I haven't the time or the patience for this nonsense. You have been caught at your spying; you will not go free. Deliver your message or don't. Try to escape or don't. My guards are waiting outside. They will take you from here, dead or alive. As you choose."
"When you put it that way... here goes. You'll look for reasons to ignore what I'm about to say, but, please, on behalf of"--all the fangirls who think you're hot--"Ferelden, give it some thought. You're not at your best right now. You're making a lot of bad decisions and the effects are just going to snowball--"
"You dare--"
"I haven't even gotten to my message yet," I snapped. "And if I'm going to go rot in a dungeon, you're going to listen to the whole thing."
He blinked. His sword dipped.
"So. Like I was saying," I continued. "The problems you're dealing with are complex and this isn't going to solve them, I get that, but I really, really--sincerely, with all my heart--think that you would be in a much better place if you would just get some sleep and also some sex."
"Foolish," he seethed, in a the-lady-doth-protest-too-much sort of way. "Idle fancies of a--base and vulgar mind. Lazy and lascivious men have sat on thrones before--"
"Hey," I interrupted. "That's a straw man. I didn't say lazy or lascivious, did I? No. I said you, in particular, needed some sleep and some sex. And personally I would recommend quality over quantity. A couple nights of solid rest. A really good lay. You'll wake up wondering what you ever saw in Rendon Howe."
"So you've been sent to separate me from Rendon? By whom?" He grimaced. "They have exhibited extremely poor judgment."
"Wouldn't that be awful? Whoever sent me would have to be a worse politician than you, and we both know that's a rarity." Yes, I was getting punchy. But I'd gotten a 'dead or alive' speech so why not go all out? Plus, so long as I kept talking he seemed to keep listening. Survival tactic. "For real, though. Half the stupid shit you do is his idea, and if you'd just think... has he tried his fantastic Antivan Crow idea out on you yet? Why would you agree to send an assassin after Maric's son? That's--"
He moved like he was made of smoke. Sleek and sinuous and so fast I could hardly follow. Just, one second he was a couple of feet away and the next he was right in my face and he'd pulled a dagger from somewhere and it was poking between my ribs.
"Who sent you?" he snarled.
I squeaked and buried my head in my hands. Please let this be a hallucination. I'd been hoping that delivering the message might trigger the end of the hallucination and I'd wake up, but that hadn't worked. Maybe I had to stay the full ten minutes? Maybe some inter-dimensional god wanted to laugh at me? "Loghain is a stubborn guy," the deity would say. "You couldn't convince him to wear a different color shirt in ten minutes."
I blurted, "Don't kill me I know all the Gray Warden secrets!"
The dagger dug in deeper. Shit.
"So you're a Gray Warden?"
"No, I'm not a Gray Warden." I shuddered. "If I survive long enough to have priorities, one of them will be to absolutely never become a Gray Warden. Really not worth it."
"A bard, then."
I peeked through two of my fingers. "You'd buy that?"
He narrowed his eyes at me. Oh, God. There's a man who can narrow his eyes like he means it. Just a little squint and the temperature in the room dropped at least ten degrees.
"Sorry. Bards are usually good looking and charming. I take compliments where I can get them." I was starting to think the dagger might have pricked me, so I sucked in my stomach a little. That helped. "You seem to be focused on me instead of contemplating my excellent advice, so let me remind you. All I said was to try sleeping and sex. Where's the downside? Put the idea to the test."
"And I suppose you're volunteering?" he asked silkily.
The thought had occurred to me, I will not deny it. But since he was not-so-subtly suggesting I'd only sleep with him so I could kill him later, I answered, "You do whatever you think is best."
He backed away and pointed--with his sword hand; he had the dagger in one hand and the sword in the other. "Sit."
I sat.
"You are remarkably well informed," said Loghain.
I nodded. More than he knew.
"But very badly behaved."
I shrugged. Couldn't blame him for thinking so.
He sighed. "The dungeons are not so terrible, Messere. You will find few comforts there, but nothing to fear."
"All those torture devices really send the wrong message then." But I accepted the inevitable. He was done talking, and I knew what my choices were. I stood up and headed for the door and the guards and a very uncomfortable night. Right before I left I turned back and said, "Everything is stacked against you. I don't mean in general, either. I mean stacked against you. I want you to have a shot. If you could stop being your own worst enemy, you might survive. You might do some good."
The expression on his face at that moment--well, if it was a figment of my imagination, my imagination must be a bleak sort of place. I think he got it for a second. Felt that cold finger down his spine, saw his reckoning coming.
Didn't stop him from sending me to the dungeon, though.