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And in the Fade she sat primly, at a table slowly disintegrating, sipping from a cup of spiders, upon a chair that was a human body bent just-so, all of its angles disjointed and wrong. It creaked as Elyse crossed her leg, situating herself more comfortably so that she might admire the jade and obsidian structures around her.
It was not often she came here, for her dreams were few and far between. Pieces of the reality she knew and lived filled in some of the corners, in that watery way that dreams do: a hallway here, a silhouette there. A boy's face, twisted as he screamed, when she'd beaten him in a duel and taken it two steps further, then three, his voice going abruptly quiet. The slowly fading pulse of a halla-hare-man, her fingers cradling the heart in her hands, as if it were a most treasured object. She held hearts like a dwarf clutched at coin, or like a Tevinter their honor. Red ran down the corners, red ran down her chin, red rain down her breasts and belly.
The figments slipped through her fingers, oily and viscous, water roaring in her ears and drowning her in colors-sounds-cacophony, changing her memories and hopes and dreams into something no longer her own. They were echoes, shades of something twisted.
Trapped in a room filling with water, the air running out, Cullen at her feet and-- A desert most dry and unabating, carried on her monstrous undead steed until even it ran out of strength, the Inquisition faltering in her absence-- A dragon's fire billowing out, consuming all in its wake, the searing agony of veins set aflame-- A lover lost, dead in her arms, the fault her own, could anyone ever forgive her--
She watched passively, unblinking, as the visions were presented unto her, like a meal served up on a platter. They tempted Elyse to gorge herself sick on them, on the nature of their ills and maladies. Poison laced meat, ready to be consumed, ready to end her if she fell prey to their malicious intent.
But to her, they were little more than moving paintings, a puppet show of what-could-never-be. The nightmarish moments repelled off her psyche like rain against a metal roof, sliding away until they were out of sight, and then discarded.
She knew exactly the kind of nightmare she’d deserve, and not a one of them was these, these farces of human banality.
That wasn't to say that Elyse didn't feel the terror: she did. It was there, beneath her surface, manifesting in physical reactions: pale and clammy skin, rushed breath, frayed nerves, heart racing-- the body was at war with the mind.
Despite the natural reaction to fear, there was none of the source of it in her. She was sure she was sleeping fretfully outside of the Fade, her body twisting naked in her sheets, struggling to break free from the dreamland's grasp. It held onto her every limb, the ethereal realm, and it dawned on her that it was because something was keeping her there.
"I know you're there," Elyse said, and there she was again, at the crumbling table and in a swirl of green, grounded in the Fade’s fabric itself, rather than in projections. This time there was a creature on the other side of the table, thrice her size and thricely limbed, its grin a skeletal wonder. Metal bands with runes wrapped around its arms and wrist and waist, curled around its hanging skeletal protusions that she suspected were not part of any mask.
She sipped at her arachnid laced tea, and poured him a cup, although the cup was made of wicker, not ceramic. Creatures poured out of it, miniscule and almost liquid. The ghostly sensation trailed down her wrist, feeling out her pulse.
"Greetings, Inquisitor," it hissed, and although the demon wasn't capable of smiling, she was sure she'd heard one in its voice. "You cannot hide what you fear, you know. It is pointless to attempt it."
Elyse stood, not yet drawing her bow that wasn’t there. A rogue like her had no true understanding of the danger of the Fade, but even with that fact aside, Elyse Trevelyan did not know fear. Apprehension, dread, suspense. All of these things, she knew.
But fear? In the visceral way?
Her sister had been terrified of spiders. Her father of failure. Her mother of her own mortality. Cullen of his addictions.
But Elyse was empty: a vessel for pleasures, for impulses, for violence. For efficiency: there was no room for fear in all of that.
"Who says I'm hiding it?" she asked, peering up at the creature with cold, empty eyes, hands outstretched in front of her to pantomime her claim. Sand dripped from the sky, splashing across her lithe fingers, trickling onto the ground. "Have you considered I have none?"
The demon-- and oh, how she knew its nature: a terrific creature, for it spoke and conversed, and fashioned itself after something human but-a-bit-more-- tilted its head, its six legs clicking together in displeasure.
"Then you are foolish," it replied, vanishing from her sight to appear behind her, those pointed legs wrapping around her in a too tight embrace, borne out of distaste and naught else.
When she had been a girl, Elyse had seen a spider trap a most impressive prey-- a centipede-- in its gossamer web, using its clever little legs to spin it again and again and again. But the spider had needed to bite its prey first, to inject its venom. Take it off guard, debilitate it.
She would not be so easy.
"Are you not concerned for your precious cause, should you perish here?" it asked, the trill in its voice dark and seductive. One leg scraped along the edge of her collarbone, trailing down towards her breast. Elyse had been in armor seconds before, and now she was in nightclothes, airy and light, torn and bloodied from a scuffle that had not happened and hung over her head with a dark and insidious promise.
This was the game it was playing, then, with her. Violation, to encroach upon what little Elyse could claim for herself in this world or any other, and rend it ugly. If she had been a weaker woman, perhaps it would have worked.
"Do you not think of the fate that would befall the world, in your absence?"
(From a Codex, read over a long night by candlelight in her not so distant past, had said: This sort of demon develops a far more refined palate, attacking the psyche of their target ... Beware the fear demon that gorges upon the terror of not only a single nightmare but of a nation...)
"I am," she said, batting the leg away. “I do.” But there were five others, not to mention his bony hands, the claws sharp at the tip and blacker than the night, all roving against her.
The creature creaked as it moved, its joints rustling, and its breath rasped through too-prominent lungs. It was a dream, but this moment felt electric: she’d fought things outside of the Fade that had felt less solid than the demon behind her.
“Should I fail, the world will end in his grasp,” Elyse said, not elaborating as to whom she was referring. There was no point: they both knew who the Inquisitor meant. She decided to let the creature paw at her. It did not bother her, as such, even as two pointed legs began to push up the hem of her nightdress. “But by then, it would be no concern of mine. What concern does a dead wpman have for the world she’s left behind?”
It was trying to take her off guard, she knew, distantly, even as its cold, dry hand crept across her abdomen. When spread, it spanned Elyse’s entire belly, a reminder that what was touching her was far from human. A curl of something very deliberately separate from terror began to swirl in her belly, the sort of thing that made her clench her thighs tightly together as a girl. (When a serving boy was whipped. The carcass of her sister’s dog. The thrill of hunting unwitting prey.)
“What of your inquisition, for which you are named the protector of?” it mocked, its nails and pointed legs digging into her flesh, red lines cutting deep. One curled around her throat, one of its bony segments pressed right to the hollow of her neck. She swallowed thickly, her fingers reaching up to curl around it with poorly concealed eagerness.
“Then it will fall.” The bottom most legs had hoisted her dress up entirely, revealing plain black undergarments that were soon slashed to ribbons. “And so will the people within it. They are good people, but I am not emotionally invested in their individual--or, truly, their collective-- well being.”
Elyse felt her cheeks flaming, the blush spreading across her nose and down her chest, for those two legs began to probe at her, trying to tease out an answer that the demon could truly use. There was something hard pressed against her back, that had not been there prior, placed in the middle of her spine.
“Then why do you lead such a cause?” it asked, pulling apart the rest of her flimsy dress.
She felt naked, exposed. And desired, for to the demon, Elyse was a puzzle that it had not yet determined what to do with.
The demon was playing with its food.
Attempting to turn in its grasp, Elyse’s face soured as its grip tightened instead. She did not like being on the receiving end of this: a leash pulled too taut, control wrested away from her greedy talons. But it was a dream, and more than that, it was the Fade.
"Because it was given to me,” Elyse bit out, breath flitting into a gasp as it cupped her breast, kneading it sharp enough to bruise. “Because I had no choice.” The demon abruptly released her, dumping her into the uneven green cobblestones beneath, leaving her askew.
“The lies are unnecessary.” It loomed closer, its fang-filled mouth of bone and naught else bared in annoyance. “You know what you are.”
“For power, then,” Elyse spat, leaping to her feet as light as an elvhen, shoving both her hands against his ghoulish chest, ineffectual. “I want the power to do as I wish, to influence whoever I like. Is that truly so unusual to you, demon?”
It ignored her question, seizing the opportunity to fist a massive hand into her mahogany hair. It pulled her up and up, until she was hanging by it. Elyse howled in her rage, kicking and flailing.
"If visions did you no harm,” the demon concluded, “then I must make you powerless here.”
It pulled its skirt aside, revealing a huge, pulsating length with ridges and edges that were unnatural. This Aspect of Nightmare was going to remind her of her weakness, in an attempt to elicit fear. Fury boiled in Elyse’s belly instead, and indignance. The demon swooped down to caress her from neck to cunt with renewed fervor, the eight points of contact slowly growing overwhelming.
True arousal had pooled in her belly, filling Elyse with reckless desire. There was no sense in being dishonest: it could tell when the terror was not genuine. And it didn’t truly matter what she did: the creature had its hypothesis, and was going to execute its plan with or without her agreement.
“Maker,” Elyse murmured, and changed tactics. Clever fingers reached out to drag blunt, human nails down his chest, to explore the planes of his unseeing face and headpiece, to run along the hanging bones. As if a lover might touch, with intent and curiosity (although fondness was, in fact, notably absent). “You are quite a specimen.”
The demon paused, growing more and more displeased by the second. “Is it a game to you, Inquisitor?” it asked, voice growing thunderous, touch-- already callous and cruel-- growing even more rough. He slammed her head against the rocks, flipping her body so that she would be ass up, a leg there holding her in place. “Are you not aware of your fate? Is it not dire enough?”
She peered up from between her arms, offering it a bloody smile, her eyes glittering with a trickster air.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Elyse said, sweetly, reaching back with both hands to pull apart her ass, to reveal her glistening sex. Even in a dream, her arousal was evident. “I think you could show me.”
It roared, climbing over her petite form to mount her. The ridges on its head were sharp, and she couldn’t stop herself from crying out in pain as he first entered her, like a dog took its bitch.
Too hard, and with no regard for her desires.
Elyse laughed, even as one of the demon’s massive hands took both of hers and pinned them to her bleeding back, with a grip so tight it would have splintered her wrists in reality. The pain was exquisite, honing her disgust, her anger. Her arousal. The massive length inside her was filling her to an impossible proportion, splitting her cunt wide with its girth. The demon yanked her back so that Elyse could sit upright on it, body forced to endure more and more of its length with every second that passed.
“It will be a pity to end you,” the demon crooned, its spidery legs probing at her mouth. To hold her mouth open, so that fingers too-large could slide between her split lips. “I would have liked to keep a toy.”
Moaning around the digits, Elyse slicked them with saliva against her explicit will, her insides pulsating against the intrusion in both of her holes. She looked down, gasping at the huge, obvious bulge evident inside her, distending her belly with its outline. It felt bizarre inside her, all edges and angles instead of smooth and soft, and cold to boot.
Tears streaked her freckled face, signs of Elyse’s mind overwhelmed. By now, the sharp appendages had cut her nearly everywhere: neck, breasts, belly, back, thighs. They were pinpricks of pain, drowned out by the rushing storm that was being penetrated by that too-huge cock.
The demon released her arms from its grasp, choosing to now grasp her around the waist with that single hand.
Oh, no. Oh, yes.
With ease, the demon slid her body up and down his alien length, using her body to further his pleasure. She whined, head lolling back, giving in to the harsh rhythm that violated her every inch in a pace that was beyond brutal, bottoming out inside her cunt with every thrust.
Elyse screamed through her first orgasm, already mounting for a second one as the demon stopped short, leaving her full of resentful confusion for a split second. And then searing cold coated her insides, obscene amounts of cum flooding from the demon’s prick and into her.
He dropped his grasp from Elyse’s waist, although she still easily stayed propped up on his softening cock, belly swollen from the sheer amount of come that filled her.
“Too bad,” Elyse said, struggling to push herself off of her captor’s lap, “because this dream’s almost over.” She fell without grace onto the tiles, with a sprawl and a sharp smile, kicking away from the demon as the world faded around them. The pointed legs that had held her so cruelly-- so well-- swiped at nothing. They went through her body entirely, as if she were a ghost.
“Maybe we can play again, sometime,” she promised, peering up at the demon with those cold, cold eyes. It snarled and howled, trying to get her within its grasps over and over again.
“I’m sure we’ll see each other again, sometime.”