Chapter Text
Survive.
A splash of blood, fingers twisting into claws.
Survive.
His back itches, like thousands of needles, but he ignores it and focuses on removing the soldiers in his way.
Survive.
He feels bigger, somehow, towering over his enemies.
Survive.
There's an opening amongst the warriors, a split in the ranks, a passage to freedom, and Lavellan wastes no time in lunging for it.
Survive.
He bowls over a few soldiers like they’re nothing, rocketing away from his attackers and towards his escape.
Survive.
At the last second he hears a familiar voice call out to him, the voice of his lover, but it must be a trick. Must be nothing. Because he can’t stay here. He can’t linger. He needs to get away. He needs to-
Survive.
~~~
He doesn’t know how long he runs. How he manages to get away. Barriers and runes that are meant to tie him down and hold him in his tracks crumble at his touch. Soldiers that attempt to stop him are either knocked away or cut down with long, nasty claws.
The world blurs with colors, clarity vanishing in the panic and stubborn need to get away.
He flies when he needs to on massive wings that burst from his back, wings he had not previously had but now feel as if they are more natural than his very legs.
He doesn’t know when or where he stops. He just knows that no one has attacked him in a while, and that there have been no barriers for him to break down. He hopes this is enough and slides to a halt, kicking up dirt and grass, slouching low as he tries to reclaim his breath.
He doesn’t sound right, as he breathes. He sounds rougher, with a crackle deep in his throat, and everything about him aches, but not from exertion.
Something inside him rolls beneath his skin, wanting to lash out and attack, but there is nothing to attack here. Only trees. Trees and trees and trees.
He looks behind him, in the direction he came from, and staggers.
The path he had taken looks dead, not too different from the charred remnants of a forest fire, but instead with rot and age. As if every tree, every bush, every patch of grass he had passed had rapidly begun to deteriorate. There are a few creatures laying on the ground, looking as if they had been dead for a long time, as the skin and muscles disintegrate before his eyes until they are only skeletons.
Had he… done this?
No. No, he’d dipped into Entropy for a moment, he’d felt it, but surely he hadn’t… he couldn’t have… It was only for a moment! To survive!
He thinks back to what happened, to fighting off the guards and soldiers and his flight from their imprisonment, but the memory is strange. Distorted. Not gone, but something’s wrong.
Why… had he been there? There’s a fuzz around the memories just before, like they linger but they’re untouchable, and they slip through his fingers like oil. He can’t… he can’t recall. It had to have been important, right? He…
He…
Who was he?
He hesitates in his thoughts, realizing there is more about himself that seems to be missing. Who was he? He couldn’t remember. He couldn’t remember his job or life or even his name. He just remembers the fight, the fear, the dark feeling rumbling up in his core as he fights to survive.
He is Entropy now, he can feel that in his core. Knows it without knowing. But that wasn’t his name. It was his nature. He had twisted into a demon… but why? What was so important for him to become so twisted? He thinks someone had called him “Ras,” yet somehow he still knows that’s not a name. It feels like a nickname or a title or a job name. But not who he is.
And… where should he go? He can’t stay still, he’s bound to be hunted, especially with his trail of decay. But, he doesn’t know where is safe. Who he can trust. If he doesn’t know who he is, then how should he know who anyone else is?
Where does he belong?
No matter… he can’t stay put. He needs to keep moving. Wherever that leads him, he can only hope it will be okay.
~~~
When he stops running, the decay that he leaves behind also lessens. Each step leaves patches of dying grass, and if he touches a tree it scars with death that begins to spread up its trunk, but it doesn’t leach out into the environment.
Ras has been walking for many days now. He still cannot remember his name, only Ras from the dying soldiers’ screams, and it’s all he’s got. May as well keep it for now. It helps keep him sane…
He can feel his mind slipping sometimes, dipping into something dark and twisted and cruel. He lashes out when it happens, leaves large swaths of death when he’s done. Trees tumble, creatures die, rivers dry, and the soil grows tainted. He can’t fully remember what he’s done after the fact, only faint flashes, and he tries to pretend the occasional, terrified screams aren’t real, or that the derelict cabins he stumbles upon were derelict long before he got there…
~~~
Sometimes he feels eyes on him. They don’t feel dangerous, just curious and thoughtful. He doesn’t know where the feeling comes from, but sometimes he looks and sees antlers, longer than he is tall, disappear behind a tree.
Nothing ever comes of the feeling, so he ignores it and just keeps moving.
~~~
He senses it too late when an arrow whistles through the air and lodges itself into his wing.
He cries out, stumbling with the force of the attack, but manages to roll out of the way of further, incoming projectiles. He growls, crouched low to the earth, feathers puffing out dangerously as he looks around the trees to find the source of his attacker.
A gleeful, unhinged laugh echoes from the shadows, a moment before a figure saunters out. A tall woman with blonde hair that sways in the wind, the sides tied back in braids. She’s dressed for hunting and a bow is gripped in one hand. In the other floats an unnatural-looking, orb-shaped object, crackling with energy, and it makes something within Ras roil with fury and pain.
He doesn’t know what that object is, or who this woman is, but every part of his being feels ready to scream and attack. The dark feeling in his gut is boiling over, pushing out, and he feels his feathers spreading, more wings emerging, talons lengthening.
The woman doesn’t seem to notice, too busy gloating.
“I don’t know why dear brother didn’t want me to find you, always wanting to ruin my fun. You’ve been a fascinating hunt! Somehow you leave such an obvious trail yet it still takes weeks to track you,” she’s saying, like this is a normal conversation and she hadn’t just struck him with an arrow.
An arrow that slowly is pushed out of his wing by his own body, popping out and clattering to the ground as he grows more and more furious.
"I͇ͣ ͇̃d̞ͦo̭͂ń̜̫ͥ'͉̅͌t͚͓͆ ͚̺̒ͪk̦ͪͥ̂̐ṉ̘̏͂ỏ̩̝̳͍w͈̄ͣ̃ ̦̖̭̎w͙̯͈̱̔ͦ͆̏ȟ͉̄̿o͔̝̦ͨ̓̽ͪ ̱ͨͫ͗y̟͂̋̿ͅő̺̫̭̫ͫ͗u̠͈̹͊ ̙̃a͖̣͍̿̀r̹͐̽e̟̍,̹̻ͧ̿" he rumbles, voice deep and distorted, like it’s been layered by other voices.
The woman’s smile drops, eyes narrowing in clear frustration and dissatisfaction. She looks him up and down, like she’s judging him, and he bristles. “Slaves should watch their mouths,” she says coldly, “As disgusting as you might be now, you belong to us. And you will be properly punished. Are you going to come quietly or not?”
Ras snarls, bearing a mouth full of layers of needle teeth, crooked and vicious. The woman smirks.
“I’m so glad you feel that way,” she coo’s, the waves her bow in a wide arch. From the shadows of the forest surrounding them, an onslaught of arrows erupts. They rain down on Ras and he shrieks in surprise, before leaping up the nearest tree. A few arrows he couldn’t avoid, but they’re already beginning to be pushed back out of his body.
Below him, the woman laughs gleefully, raising up her strange object. Around her, lightning crackles, like living serpents of violent, glowing energy. It circles her as Ras hops around the tops of the trees, avoiding the lashing tendrils of lightning. It feels like she’s toying with him.
“You might as well give up, little demon!” the woman calls gleefully, raising the object higher. “You’re nothing to me.”
"T̮ͫh̥͌ͅe͎̫͒ṇ̊ ͣ̃ͅw͔ͣh̟̪͒͌y̗͉͕̓ͤ ̟̦ͬa̠̗̼̝ͯ̔͋r̜͕̤ͦͣ̏̍e̜͊ͧ̔ ̯͙̣̆y̗̰̾̅ͅo̟̪̔̔u̩̹̝ͧ ͙̂̉ͨ̿s̘̬̝͚͂̀o̝̤̙̘̍ ͈̍o̭̻͉͍ͬͣͣ͐b̬͚͂s͈ͮͦ̋̚ĕ̖͔̠̭ͪs̤͒̋s̹͔̫̠̾ͣ̋e͇̱̖ͦ̄ͬd̩̤̳̐͋ͬ ̦̩̯́ͪw̞̪̤ͭi̝ͮt͓̹̆h̦̙̏ ̼ͯ̚m̤͌e̖͈͂̂?̠̾ͬ" Ras calls back down.
The woman pauses, clearly stunned that he had spoken back to her, before her face twists with a scowl. This girl really needed anger management…
The lightning only grows, sharp strikes crashing all around them, and this time Ras can’t avoid it entirely. A strike obliterates the perch he had been leaping for and he stumbles, wings spreading in an attempt to catch himself in the air, but even more lightning bombards the feathery appendages.
He cries out as many of his wings are fried and he falls, crashing into the ground. The pain that blossoms pushes at the boiling darkness inside him, begging to be let loose. And he doesn’t think he can hold it much longer.
Doesn’t think he wants to.
“Insolent… disgusting… arrogant… slave…” the woman is snarling under her breath, a dome of lightning still curling around her as she stalks towards him. “Forget bringing you in,” she snaps at him, “It is my duty as a god to strike down demons like you!”
Ras shifts, looking up at her for a quiet, heavy moment.
"W̮ͥh̻̱̑ǎ̘t͓ͦ ̘ͭk͓̒i̹̻͋n͖ͮ̅d̲̄̽͂ ͈ͪ͊o͔̦̹͍̎f͈̬ͤͅ ̦̮̳̃̀g͎̮̹̘ͥͪͯ̓ő͖ͯͣd̠̝͂̈ ̜̉ͯ̓w̫̃̆̓ḧ̥̦͛i̝ͮ͑n̰͕̓̍͂̆e̳̓s̼̰̲ͩ̇ͪ ̙ͤl̰ͪ̇̚i̮ͫͭk̠̔̿̃è̳̤͚̉ ̦̃̚à̬͈̲ ̠ͤ̉ͨb̞́̓i͓̫̎ͅṭ̈́́c̞̉h̼̥̃͌?̙͂"
The woman roars, insulted by Ras’s childish comeback, and raises the orb once more. It glows violently, squealing with energy that rings through Ras unpleasantly, setting his insides alight with a fury he does not understand. The darkness in him mounts the more the orb glows, rolling nauseatingly until it finally snaps out.
Ras hears himself roar one moment before his world goes dark.
~~~
The forest is dead.
Ras looks around himself and doesn’t see a tree in sight, only seeing black, decomposing remnants. The trunks nearest him, fallen over, turn to dust when he so much as nudges them.
Where had the woman gone? He can’t remember what he’d done. He doesn’t know how much of this is him, or is her. Some tree remains look charred, not diseased or disintegrating. How long had the fight been? How long had he lost himself?
He figures there won’t be any answers here. Everything is dead. He shouldn’t linger and should keep moving.
So, he turns to walk, each step kicking up particles of corpses. It doesn’t take long, however, for his taloned foot to catch on something more solid and have him stumble.
He turns to look down, curious what has remained solid among the carnage.
He sees something pale amongst the blacks, greys, and browns. He brushes away the soot and dust, nose scrunching to keep from sneezing.
And then he finds himself staring down at a single, dismembered arm. Sitting not far from its fingertips lays the orb from before, silent and calm, yet still setting Ras on edge.
He lifts up the arm, watching it flop around like a limp noodle. It doesn’t feel like it might have once belonged to that woman, or any living thing. It feels fake.
He tosses it aside, uncaring, and turns to the orb.
Whatever this orb is, every part of his instincts screams that it is wrongwrongwrong. He hates it. It shouldn’t exist. He wants it gone. He wants it gone.
He reaches out and lifts up the orb with his talons. It looks metallic, but it doesn’t clink or sound like metal. It sounds like stone and weighs more than it looks it should.
Touching it only makes Ras more certain it shouldn’t exist. It feels like it is screaming in agony, as if it were forced to exist in a way it was never meant to exist. There are multiple parts that feel mashed together in a messy, tactless hybrid. Not a single part of this orb feels complete.
It should have died a long time ago.
He presses in his talons, just a bit, the tips digging into the orb as if it is made of soft putty. The orb falls silent immediately, screams of pain dying in a sigh of relief, before the orb begins to crumble into nothing more than sand.
From the center of the orb falls a chunk of faintly glowing… glass? Quartz? A crystal of some kind… It plops into his palm, amidst the remnants of the orb, untouched by the destruction.
Ras blinks at it in surprise. It hums with an energy not too different from the orb, but this is gentle. A soft brush of power, diminished but still alive.
Alive…
Was this alive?
Was that orb using a living being to harness power?
Is that why it felt so wrong.
But Ras gets no answer. The woman is gone, if she even still lives, the forest is dead, and the crystal purring in his palm is silent.
He shakes off the dust from the orb and clutches the crystal to his chest, a protective urge setting in, and the crystal seems to hum in appreciation. It feels like a comfort… Like Ras isn’t alone.
So he sets off once more with the crystal held tight in his hands.
~~~
He walks for two rises and falls of the sun before he reaches the edge of the destruction. The carcasses of both animals and plants have long since crumbled and left nothing but ashy soot behind. Ashy soot that has turned to muck from the rain the previous day.
When he reaches the boundary he can’t help but stare for a long moment, mesmerized by what he’s done. He wonders what all he’s destroyed. He wonders what is gone that will never come back. He wonders what opportunities he’s ended.
The crystal hums gently in response to his concerned thoughts. It seems to know how he feels the way he can feel it, but not like an elf’s aura. This is different somehow.
The crystal can’t point or motion or do anything, really, yet Ras still somehow knows where it wants him to look. He inches closer to the edge of the boundary and squints, curious what the crystal wants him to see.
Amongst the dark sludge of death he sees specks upon specks of green sprouts. He leans closer, brows furrowed in confusion, uncertain if he can believe that this is real. The sprouts don’t look two days old, yet they grow from the midst of the mud, strong and vibrant.
He looks back at where he had come from, at the expanse of destruction, and is certain he sees green specks decorating all across the landscape.
The crystal hums again, but this time with more purpose. A more direct and pointed message within its essence that Ras tries desperately to understand.
From death comes new life.
There are no real words. Nothing spoken aloud or inside his head. Yet he still knows what the crystal is trying to say.
“Then life will go on, despite what I have done,” Ras mumbles, looking at the destruction. The dark part of him revels in it, but another part only feels sad.
Not “despite.” It thrives and grows strong because of what you’ve done.
Ras looks back down at the crystal, confused.
Entropy gives by taking what needs to be taken.
“I take everything whether I want to or not,” Ras snaps, sneering. “Everywhere I step there is death. How can everything need to die?”
This only occurs because you believe it will.
Ras has nothing to say to that. He isn’t sure what it might mean.
Take a new sprout between your fingers and do not let it die.
“That’s not how this works.”
Why not?
Ras stares at the crystal for a long, silent moment, but decides he may as well humor his only company.
He lowers himself onto his knees, the sludge sticking to the feathers that cover his legs, and then reaches for a sprout that already has a bud on its end. He pauses as his talons get closer, looking at the innocent little sprout, and hoping, truly hoping, it will not die.
He brushes his talons over the growth of life, gentle as can be, and it bounces slightly, springy and strong.
And it lives.
He blinks, then nudges it with his talons again, then a different sprout, and a few others, but none of them die. Not a single one.
If you expect only one thing, then only one thing you will receive.
He nods, stunned but a bloom of happiness spreading up his chest, and for a moment, the darkness doesn’t feel as strong.
Now keep moving forward.
~~~
The plants do not die under his feet anymore. They stay green and vibrant unless he desires otherwise. Sometimes the darkness pulls profusely to destroy, but it isn’t as persistent as before. Still, he will stop and spread the Entropy that wants to be let loose, just for a moment, and then it will be appeased.
He remembers that the crystal says Entropy takes what needs to be taken, and he wonders what constitutes this.
Eventually, many days later, after breaking from the trees into a rocky, mountainous region covered in a light layer of frost, he stumbles upon a wooden cottage, hidden from all eyes, falling apart. It sits alone amongst the stones, some kind of stove at its side that has long since crumbled in on itself. Ras had not been in any cottages yet. Until now, his powers had left them crumbled and destroyed.
A forgotten place, the crystal hums, feeling especially pleased.
Ras isn’t sure what’s so special about this cottage, but it would be nice to rest under a roof, he thinks. He has not grown hungry, thirsty, or tired his entire journey, but the idea of rest still sounds like a pleasant experience.
He moves closer to the cottage, but pauses when he sees movement in the shadows of the porch.
He hadn’t spotted it before because it was black, but there sits a fox, scratching at its ear with a back paw, before shaking itself out. It looks up at Ras with piercing, orange eyes, snorts as if unimpressed, then turns and slips into the cottage from a hole in the wall.
“Well, that was rude,” Ras mumbles and the crystals seems to hum with mirth.
He continues up and into the cottage. The door still stands, covered in moss, but the moment Ras touches it, it topples over. The sounding thud and dust it kicks up have Ras flinching, but he inches further in anyway.
The only things that remain inside the cottage are a few pieces of rotten, wooden furniture, yet the wooden walls and foundations still seem strong.
There’s something… odd about the cottage, however. Now that he stands within it, there is a definite strangeness that echoes through it. A strangeness that, while different from anywhere else Ras has been, feels… comforting.
The darkness in him, for once, settles, yet Ras still feels an itch. An itch to find where this feeling stems from. The crystal in his palm is silent.
He slowly moves through the cottage, talons scraping with every step. Eventually, he finds himself in a back room, one that likely would have been a bedroom, with a collapsed table in one corner, and an empty bookshelf against the left wall.
Ras tilts his head curiously at the bookshelf. Well, maybe not the bookshelf. This itch is pulling him in that direction, but he doesn’t think it stems directly from the bookshelf.
Then he hears quick scratching and looks down just in time to see the black, bushy tail of the fox hook around the edge of the bookshelf and disappear. Was there a hole over there?
He moves to the other side of the bookshelf and stares at… nothing. There is no hole, no sign of the fox, and nothing to indicate any special energy.
Yet, he knows, on some level, he is exactly where he needs to be.
He stares for a long moment, curious, where the bookshelf and the wall meet. Even without his memories, he knows this isn’t exactly something people generally care about. And why would they? Why would this matter? A random corner in a random, rotting cottage, out in the middle of nowhere, with no one near for miles.
He steps forward, reaching out to the corner, and it feels like the space is expanding, like a double door slowly opening up. It splits and pulls the closer he gets, cracking open until-
He trips.
He leans too far forward and falls, tumbling forward towards the opening, and falling face first onto the wooden floor.
Face first onto the wooden floor?
Shouldn’t he have smacked his head against the wall?
The crystal clatters where he’s dropped it and he quickly grabs it, pulling it close and mumbling apologies, before looking around. It looks like the same room he’d been in a moment ago… except now he’s facing away from the bookshelf and wall, and instead of a crumbling table, there’s a decrepit bed frame.
But that’s not the only difference. The itch from before is gone, settled under his skin, and the darkness in his gut isn’t just calm, it’s relieved. He feels good, but he doesn’t know why.
He moves slowly, carefully looking around the cottage as he walks. It is still the same building, but there are a few small differences. Something moved to a different spot, a stool instead of a chair, nothing major.
As he gets to the front door, he stops, staring at it and wondering why it isn’t on the ground anymore.
He nudges it, as he’d done before, and it creaks before toppling forward, this time crashing onto the porch.
The cottage is odd, but mostly the same. The outside world, however…
What were once barren, frosty stones are now covered with massive plant growth, flowers of different kinds all growing on the same shrubs or bushes. Trees of all different kinds arch high towards the sky, not a single one looking the same as the one beside it. It is vibrant and stunning in a way no man could ever create. Even the sky is awash with color, the faint shimmer of rainbows in the air like the shimmer on oil. Beams of sunlight take on a prism of rainbow colors as they pass through the canopy.
The vibrancy isn’t overwhelming, though. It is faint and meshes together like a seamless, natural puzzle. The colors, while different, fit together and are gentle on his eyes.
It feels haunting, in a way, too. Like there is something unseen that lingers in the beauty, but it doesn’t make Ras feel uneasy. If anything, it just feels inevitable. Of course there are things he cannot see. That is the way it is meant to be.
“What is this place?” he wonders aloud, astounded and happy and at ease.
The crystal speaks without speaking, more clear than ever before.
This is the Void, it says, This is home.