[ OPEN ]

[fleurdesel]

FORM: Sending Crystal
SENDER: Adelaide LeBlanc
RECIPIENT: Everyone
WHAT: Questions for Shardbearers
WHEN: Guardian 22
WHERE: Emprise Du Lion, heard by all
NOTES: Research Questionnaire for people that have shiny things on/in their person.

This message is for anyone that has a shard in their hand, their chest, or otherwise on their person; Rifter or Thedosian or otherwise. If you are so fortunate or unfortunate depending upon your view of the shard as to have one I've questions for you in the interest of better understanding that which you have and what it means for your health, the world around you, and how likely it is you might attract demons in your sleep. At my current best estimate the odds are high in on last but I tend to err on assuming the worst and being pleasantly surprised when the world doesn't rain down fire, death, and the undead.

If you would rather speak in person and are in Emprise du Lion- I can be found in my healing tent. If not? I will return to Skyhold at the end of Guardian if you would prefer to wait to speak face to face or am available at all hours on the crystals.

Comments

[foxsays]

[Adelaide is a friend of Korrin’s, a fellow councillor but she’s still wary. Everything feels like it’s going wrong just now and so she almost debates not even responding. But they’re all in this together, allegedly, so she should say something and she was one of the very first.]

I'm willing to do this over the sending crystal, I have had some of the connection to the Fade explained to me previously but you are a mage, you will likely know more on the subject.

[If she sounds tired? Well she is, she isn't the bright and dazzled girl awed by ice sculptures today, just someone keeping their head above the water.]

crystal

[fleurdesel]

If you have questions in kind, I will answer as best I am able. If you are more comfortable making this a private conversation, we might do that as well.

[ Whatever makes this easier for Araceli- she can and will do. ]

[foxsays]

No, others might learn something from it, we can let other people hear it. Ask whatever you wish to ask, I will ask at the end.

[Adelaide might ask or explain something in doing so that prompts a question from Araceli anyway.]

[fleurdesel]

[ She already knows Araceli's name and that she came with the first batch of Rifters, that much she notes down. ]

Has your shard caused you pain since you arrived in Thedas?

[foxsays]

It did upon arrival. It felt like I had been stung, the pain was worst in the centre of the mark but it seemed to radiate out, to my fingers and up my arm but nothing I tried seemed to stop the pain. Then it seemed to lessen over several days, by maybe a week or so it no longer pained me.

[fleurdesel]

Have you lost any sensation in your fingertips or lost any grip strength in that hand?

[foxsays]

Only when I was in pain. The hand itself feels perfectly fine, I climb so often that I would know if the grip was wrong.

[A hesitation follows, punctuated by a soft sigh.]

I have not used my mark at all though, I have not closed a single rift or done...anything else that might be done with it.

[That admission might help, to just get the truth out of the way quickly.]

[fleurdesel]

As far as we are aware, all rifters are capable of is closing them. I am hoping to prove you lack the requisite connection to the fade to do otherwise.

[foxsays]

[Well she sure just cracked her knee off something.]

Wait! Wait, wait, wait - what do you mean by that? I know enough to know that this is a very rare and strange sort of thing, are you saying we could all have the potential to do as Sina did? Consciously or otherwise?

[fleurdesel]

That is the current theory. I am trying to prove you cannot. Sina was pulling from the fade with her magic when the rift opened- she has a connection that you and the others lack. If there is no connection it might be impossible or merely difficult- but you must will it to be so. Pull from the fade to make it so. That is not something one does on accident.

[foxsays]

Someone, and forgive me but I cannot recall his name at all, tried to explain about how the shards are connected. About the song. [Please Adelaide, be kind and ignore the way her voice isn't nearly as confident as it was upon meeting, or any time Araceli has been waiting for Korrin. At least Adelaide can't see the faces she's pulling as she struggles to remember her conversation with Cole that seems hazier the harder she tries to reach for it.] Are we connected to it the way humans and elves are here? Or is it just one part of us that might be?

[fleurdesel]

I...do not know. There is a resonance in them I can feel as I would magic; and the shards themselves are connected to the veil and the Fade. Whether that connection extends into you properly- I cannot say. [ Her voice gentles somewhat. ] but I mean to find the truth of it.

[foxsays]

Oh.

[None of this is Adelaide’s fault but the disappointment slips out anyway.]

Could it be outside of us? The rifts, or what I have heard of them, they're already there and the demons come from that other side, different again to where any of us came through. [A soft curse follows, it's hard to explain thoughts when you don't fully understand it all.] I don't know what help I can be, there is a very good chance I will be a hindrance more than anything else but if I can, you can call on me.

Would-- [She needs a moment to breathe so she can ask this, that horrible thought that's been sitting in her head since Korrin told her of Sina] would exposure to the rifts and using our marks make them...stronger is not the right word but I don't know how else to phrase it.

[fleurdesel]

That resonance? Seems locked to the shard, and as the shard is not a part of you- I am working blind here, I am afraid. Had I answers I would give them. [ But that is something to consider- something she can test. If that resonance of the fade and the veil is IN their hand or IN the shard, if it threads through them as a spirit possessing a body. ]

That is part of why I am asking after how long those that have them have had them- and if they have used them. To see if the symptoms change. Thusfar my results are inconclusive and there is little record of the Herald's experience with her shard.

[foxsays]

How can it not be a part of me? It's in my hand. [Maybe that's what disturbs her so much, that her body - even in such a small way - is no longer entirely hers. That something has changed without her consent. This isn't like a tattoo that she's chosen and had inked into her skin, it isn't like gaining a scar that serves as a reminder.

This wasn't her choice but now she's marked forever perhaps.]

I won't keep you, I'm sure there are many others to speak to but thank you, I understand that this is strange to all of you, almost as strange as it is for any of us.

[fleurdesel]

An arrowhead in your hand is no more a part of your flesh than the shard is. It is present- but it is not you.

This is stranger for you and those like you than it is for us. Unprecedented and strange, but we are familiar with most of the base notes that make up this strangeness. You've no such advantage. If you have need of me, or have more questions- I am always available to you. To all of you.

[foxsays]

An arrowhead I can remove, a lead shot I can remove even when my hands shake and my vision blurs on the edges. This? This I cannot remove. I cannot forget. This is like a sickness; it is within you but not every sickness can be purged from the body so easily, it isn't something I can simply sweat out.

[fleurdesel]

...I did not intend to make light. There are no true comparisons that might be drawn in this due to what the shards are, what they do, but that? Was the closest I could make.

[ Something lost under the skin that cannot be removed, present, foreign, but not of Araceli's bone or flesh. ]

[foxsays]

[It's a long time before Araceli replies, silence on her end as if she's decided she's done but eventually, one long cursing fit later, she returns. Not exactly calmer but a little hoarse and tired instead.]

Forgive me, that was rude of me. This is...this is a lot and I am not exactly as I was, as my parents made me.

[fleurdesel]

[ She'd gone back to other questions, other answers, buried deep in trying to find a pattern in her notes when Araceli's message comes. On her end it takes but a moment to reply. ]

You have a right to it. Thedas is strange and difficult enough for those of us born here. That you are weathering it with this much grace is remarkable. I could not were I in your shoes.