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[Corker]

And here we go again!  It's the sequel to "The Search for the Dragon's Claw."  If you haven't read that one, just know that it's 9:37 Dragon, and Dalish clans from all over Thedas have been arriving in the new homeland in the Hinterlands.  But the Sabrae, Warden Commander Vashti Mahariel's own clan, have been so far not among them...


Prologue

Father called it the Arlathven. It was more people than Vashti had ever seen in her life. Aravels were scattered over the plain in every direction, making clan camps around the central gathering area. She went with Father and Mother there every morning, and Father spoke to and sometimes yelled at other Keepers about the shemlen. Then they’d go home and a parade of strangers came to see Master Ilen’s wares, or to arrange marriages or other swaps. Father’s First, Marethari, was old, and there were no other mages in the clan, so they’d arranged to take in a little girl from Nevarra. Vashti felt sorry for her, because she cried for her mother and father at night. But it would be nice, she hoped, to have a girl her own age in the clan. Tamlen and Fenarel could be very stupid, sometimes.

One day, there was even more yelling at the other Keepers than usual. Then, back at camp, Father argued with Marethari, which made little Merrill cry. Even Mother was snappish, and the the air felt unsettled when the clan bedded down for the night. Vashti hoped that the Arlathven would be over soon.

She woke to screams and snarls and her mother yelling for her to run. There was a horrible monster in the aravel, and Mother was fighting it with her trusty dar’missan. Vashti froze, suddenly too frightened to remember how to run and get out. “Mamae! Papae!” she cried. Where was Father? He should be destroying the monster with his magic!

The twisted thing struck her mother, dashing her back into the wall of the aravel and making it rock from side to side. Then it was bounding toward her, one step, two, and instinct finally overrode all else. Vashti turned to scramble out of the narrow hatch next to her bed.

Three things happened at once: the hatch popped open, she felt claws biting at her neck, and she heard her mother shout, “You will not harm her!” The world went white as Mother called down the wrath of Elgar’nan, and, bleeding and sobbing, Vashti tumbled out onto the guide’s seat on the aravel.

The rest of the clan were rousing. Marethari emerged from her aravel with her staff blazing; someone grabbed one of Vashti’s skinny legs and hauled her off the aravel. Flung over a shoulder and hastened away, she could see the aravel shaking and tilting before the monster burst out of the door. “Don’t look, da’len, don’t look,” her clansmate (Ashalle, she realized dimly) said as she hurried her away, past the edge of camp, and other aravels blocked her view. She lifted her head, craning her neck, sure that she would see her mother and father emerge together from the aravel to help Marethari destroy the horrible thing. It hurt her and it hurt Mother and she wanted to see it die.

----------------

“Sp” before “St.” “Sl” before “Sp.” “Sm” between “Sl” and “Sp.”

Another with soot stains on the cover. A careful rubbing with the gummy resin Ines had provided would take care of that. “Spirit” goes after... no wait, this one was about spirits. It belonged in the Fade section, not the Spirit School section. Someone had shelved it incorrectly.

Who, I wonder? And are they dead?

Finn sat suddenly, dropping into a chair at a reading table. It still hit him at odd moments, a sort of bewildered grief and guilt, mixed with impotent anger and a sense of betrayal. He’d been away; he’d been safe, while his home of over twenty years had been turned into a waking nightmare.

The templars hadn’t been able to stop it, which left him wondering exactly what the point of the Circle was. Wasn’t that the purpose of the Harrowing, to ensure that they were all strong enough to withstand a lifetime of exposure to hungry demons? Didn’t they go along with being watched all hours of the day and night because they were promised that it would keep them safe from themselves? And it didn’t. It so obviously, horribly didn’t work.

And he could scarcely believe that Senior Enchanter Uldred had turned to blood magic; that he had his will bested by a demon and turned abomination was almost unthinkable. Uldred, who wasn’t a senior enchanter just because he’d been here for years, but because he was intelligent. (And Finn was particular about to whom he granted that distinction.) But the survivors all agreed on both those counts. He’d not only learned blood magic, but taught it to a secret cabal of others, planning to overthrow the Tower’s leadership from within. And then, once possessed, he’d turned on his fellow mages and...

Finn shuddered and dropped his head into his hands, trying not to remember Nathan’s broken account of what had passed in the Harrowing chamber. That could have been me, Finn thought, recalling Knight Commander Greagoir asking him sternly if his excursion request was strictly necessary. If it had been turned down, if he’d still been here...

Soot stains.

----------------

The daughter of Asha’belannar was a young woman, but deemed old enough by her mother to undertake some of the chores that fell to a Witch of the Wilds. And that included meeting with the Dalish Keepers who passed through the Korcari Wilds and wished to give their respects.

As happened from time to time, Asha’belannar wished to claim a price for her protection in the swamp, Morrigan told them. Her mother required her to practice a certain ritual, and she in turn needed the aid of another mage. She had prepared a warded site, out in the swamp. Solan’s First prudently recommended he take a guard with him, in case bandits or others should come upon them while they were performing the ritual. Morrigan had smirked but allowed it, telling them where and when to meet her the next night.

Moon-cast shadows were not deep enough to hide the nature of the ritual, and Ariane was grateful that she had a task to keep her eyes anywhere but the center of the wards.

It was mercifully short, and she heard a few comments exchanged in professional undertones; evaluating the results of her practice? Perhaps. She certainly wasn’t going to ask.

Solan appeared at her side a few moments later. “Ariane, you - ”

“Blind, deaf, and mute, Keeper.”

He sighed, relieved. “Ma serranas. We should return to the aravels now and be - ”
”Hold!” The deep voice was not Morrigan, nor her mother, nor any of their clan. Ariane wheeled, swords coming up - and was suddenly blinded by a wash of white light. Behind her, Keeper Solan cried out, and she heard him crumple to the ground.

“Wild elves?” The voice was closer and disappointed; she turned in that direction, trying to blink away the dazzle. “But the enchantments... You do your magics in the Witch’s swamp?”

The dark sword on the pale shield was one of the first things to resolve itself. “Stay back, templar!” Ariane called, crossing her blades before her. “We are not your concern.”

“This close to Lothering, placing runes and hexes upon the ground where any might stumble into them, to Maker knows what end... yes,” he spat, “it is my concern. I knew if I returned here, I would find the apostate responsible eventually. Stand aside, girl, and no blood will be shed.”

”I am the sword of my fathers!” Ariane leapt, one blade swinging high, the other following low a heartbeat later.

The templar swung his shield up to block the first, and parried aside her second blade with his own. “So be it.”

The sound of steel on steel rang out through the darkness. If the young witch heard, she did not seem to think it was her business to return and interfere. Ariane fought fast and hard, knowing well that it was her speed and agility that would win her the battle; strength and endurance were on the side of the heavily armored shemlen warrior. She let fly a hail of blows, keeping the man on the defensive - right until his shield punched out, knocking her off her feet and to the sodden ground.

She rolled when she fell, and saw his blade come down. Putting her weight back on her elbows, she lifted both feet together and kicked, hard into the side of his knee. With a pained grunt, he staggered and dropped to his hands and knees. Abandoning her blades, she drew a dar’misu from her belt as she threw herself bodily at him, seeking a joint in the armor into which she could plunge the blade -

“Enough!” Solan croaked from nearby, drops of lyrium glittering blue-white on his lips in the dark. He cast at least three spells as Ariane tried to find a weak point and the templar tried to grapple her and pull her off. Finally, one took hold of the human and he froze, muscles locking in place. “Enough, Ariane. We go now.”

“But Keeper, he was going to take you!” She was outraged. Deprive a clan of its Keeper, over a spell he hadn’t even cast? He hadn’t asked, hadn’t listened, just saw them here and assumed -

“He defends his people as you defend ours. Let us give the Chantry no reason to send more of them.”

“But - ”

“Ariane! We go now.”  Solan's voice was iron.

She sighed. “Yes, Keeper.” Still, she leaned down to roughly pull the gauntlets from the man’s hands. “Because you have grabby hands,” she said. “Learn to keep them to yourself.”

[Corker]

Chapter 1

The Dalish homeland in the Hinterlands was far from thriving, but they were making it work, finding the hidden places that had been spared the withering Blight and surviving there, while the Keepers tried to heal the sickened land. King Bhelen did not yet renege on his deal to rebuild Ostagar, and the fortress was looking strong and hale again. It provided a center for a capital, near enough to the now-severed Imperial Highway to deal with the shemlen for those who sought rapprochement. And it contained them, limited them to certain granite halls, keeping them away from the elves who believed that isolation was necessary to regain their lost immortality.

From the window of her small, spare office, Warden Commander of the Dalish Vashti Mahariel watched the comings and goings in the main courtyard with satisfaction. It was not entirely her doing, no: the land was freely given by Anora of Ferelden; the Keepers wrestled with issues of governance; the elvhen people brought the dream to life. But she’d had a hand in securing the queen’s gratitude, and bartered Kal’Hirol to the dwarves for their aid. She was proud of that.

On Finn’s advice, and with Warden Commander Nathaniel Howe’s blessing, she had told the Keepers about the Wardens’ secret Joining. If Weisshaupt expected her to recruit and train Dalish Wardens, they would need mages to prepare the Joining cup.

It had caused a commotion. It was heresy to those who valued the purity of Arlathan’s blood. But to withdraw from the Wardens entirely would be to leave the Dalish dependent on other races for protection, when the next Blight came.

They’d compromised. The Wardens would restrict themselves to the areas allowed to the shemlen, mingling only with those Dalish who risked exposing themselves to outside influence. Vashti considered it vastly better than her previous self-exile in Flemeth’s old hut. Living among elvhen faces again was a precious gift.

She had a few recruits now, not that Weisshaupt seemed to care much, one way or the other, especially now that Morrigan was gone. She had lied, at Alistair’s request, saying only that the witch had performed some protective ritual. They demanded that she seek her out, and she was too glad to take the Anderfels Wardens to the eluvian at Drake’s Fall and explain that the witch was gone beyond their reach. Her recent misadventure in Orlais likewise failed to move the First Warden to action on behalf of either party. Of course, if she ever set foot in Val Royeaux again, she’d probably be killed by the Wardens there, and that would pass unnoticed as well.

That suited her down to the ground.

It had all finally started to feel like enough. There was still disappointment and loss and pain, but who in life was spared those things? Her young Wardens - many veterans of the siege of Denerim - carved their blades from Flemeth’s bones, tracked with Dog’s pups, and learned to shoot the blossoms from a deathroot with their bows. Tainted they might all be, but they were an honorable clan.

And then the sodding Tanaret clan arrived.

There was always a celebration when a wandering clan decided to settle in the Hinterlands. The Warden’s Fire was stoked high in Ostagar’s courtyard, and many came bearing gifts of food and drink for the travelers. The Great Hall was opened so that all could walk the Path of the Ancestors, the display of ancient elvhen artifacts. And the Tanaret, in return, shared the news of their journey.

Vashti had not been there to hear it. Not knowing the clan’s preferences, the Wardens stayed away from the newcomers, until they had decided to sequester or not. It was Ariane, fair brow creased with worry, who had come to her with the tale.

They had met the Sabrae, who were in dire straights on the slopes of the Sundermount.

“It... almost sounds like there is something wrong with their Keeper,” Ariane said hesitantly.

“Tell me,” Vashti rapped out, leaning forward on her stool.

“They lost their halla somehow. They’ve had none, since the Blight! And they were without a First for almost as long. The Tanaret left one of their own... Vinell, they said she was called... to study with Keeper Marethari. They offered to take the whole clan in, to walk with them until they could find halla, but... the Keeper turned them down.”

“They’ve been encamped for six, seven years?”

“Yes!”

“On Sundermount.” Vashti scowled. The tales of that place were fell and dark. And Keeper Marethari refused to leave it? “Did they say... did they say what happened to the First?”

“It wasn’t said. I think they assumed... given the timing... she perished in the Blight.”

Vashti closed her eyes and wondered if Fenarel was dead, too. She should not have taken them back to those ruins, Keeper’s orders or not. Perhaps they’d been among the ghouls they killed, searching for Morrigan...

“Abelas,” Ariane said quietly.

Vashti gave a short, sharp shake of her head, opened her eyes and sat back. “Well. That’s news.”

Ariane watched her expectantly, and when she said nothing more, asked, “Don’t you want to go see them?”

“Why?” she replied shortly, then grimaced. “Of course, I worry now. But the Tanaret offered aid and were refused. What shall I do, drive a herd of halla across the sea to them?”

“I think you should talk to their Keeper, Nessal. I...” Ariane glanced around the Commander’s office, then leaned forward confidentially, head turned to watch for eavesdroppers behind her in the hall. “I had the feeling he was holding back part of the tale, in public. You are a daughter of the Sabrae, he might tell you more of it,” she said in low tones.

Vashti stared flatly at Ariane’s visible eye, avoiding the temptation of tracing jaw and ear and throat with her gaze. “You think there is danger?”

“Seven years on Sundermount? How can there not be? Perhaps they did lose their halla, but it is said many of us walked to Halamshiral on foot. It is very strange for them to remain there, in such a place, for so long.”

Vashti was, in a way, relieved. If Ariane was also concerned, then she was not herself jumping at shadows. She stood, putting a more comfortable distance between them. “Will he meet with me?”

Ariane’s mouth twitched. “He is already meeting with the Council of Keepers,” she said.

Vashti frowned; that was very soon after an arrival for such a meeting. It was meant to help the newcomers understand how life in the Hinterlands worked, currently, and to give them the choice to sequester or to interact with the shemlen and the Wardens. “More to the tale,” she grunted. “To be told in private.”

“That is what I think, as well,” Ariane agreed.

It was not long before Hamied, Solan’s First, appeared in the doorway. Ariane offered her clansmate a smile and a nod; Vashti sighed and lifted both eyebrows expectantly. “Warden Commander,” he greeted her with a nod, eyes flickering to Ariane in brief acknowledgement. “The Council of Keepers requests your presence. There is a matter touching on your... your clan.”

“You may say ‘former clan,’” the Warden said dryly. “I have not walked with them in many years.”

“Just so,” Hamied replied uneasily.

Vashti looked to Ariane. “I will meet you by the Warden’s Fire,” she said, and strode out, leaving Hamied hurrying to keep up.

“The Council” was something of an overstatement. Most of the Keepers had departed by the time Vashti arrived; Lanaya and Solan remained, along with a new face Vashti assumed was Nessal. She kept her face carefully neutral; Lanaya was an ally, had been since the Blight, but Solan... Ariane’s Keeper was an unfriend, for reasons personal and political.

Nessal was grey and beginning to stoop, but he moved spryly, taking her hand and pressing it warmly. “Ma serranas,” he said, gesturing out at the Great Hall. “This is... I had not thought to live to see such a thing.” Vashti smiled and ducked her head, pleased but never sure what to say to that. His next words put all thought of a reply out of her mind: “Your father would have been so proud.”

She stopped, eyes widening in shock. Her father was not spoken of in such a manner: fondly, warmly, without sidelong glances and warding gestures. Nessal nodded, patting her hand. “Oh, I knew him. Well. We agreed on many things, you know, and he would be so pleased to see -- ”

“Nessal,” Solan interrupted. “It is ill luck -- ”

“Worse luck to forget,” the older elf snapped, turning on the other Keeper. “We have already forgotten so much; let us not lose the stories of our own kin.” Finally dropping the stunned Warden’s hand, he smiled gently at her again. “We can talk later.” The smile faded. “As much as I hate to contribute to Solan’s superstitions, I regret to say that your clan has found bad luck, again.”

Vashti leaned against one of the stone columns. “Tell me.”

“Marethari has found a demon bound on Sundermount,” he said quietly. “She fears that if the clan leaves, it will be loosed.”

“You have fought demons before, haven’t you, Warden?” Lanaya asked.

Vashti nodded, frowning. Between the Tower and the Blackmarsh, she was not ignorant of the malicious spirits. “Bound? If it’s bound, wasn’t it hidden?”

“Yes, well hidden. Perhaps since Arlathan’s fall,” Nessal said sadly. “It promised Marethari and her First ancient knowledge, if they would but free it. Her First was... tempted by the offer. Marethari guards the place against her return.”

Vashti pushed off the column. “Do you mean Merrill?”

“I believe that was the name, yes. She would not listen to the Keeper and has been exiled.”

Vashti looked at the other two Keepers, eyes dark. “And you want me to do what?” she asked, voice flat with a kindling anger. There were two obvious solutions to the problem: slay the demon or the one who would attempt to free it. And if they thought they could order her to murder her clan-sister...

“Investigate,” Lanaya said quickly.

Solan nodded. “Take your shemlen mage and see what can be done to bring the Sabrae home. Perhaps the demon can be rebound, or destroyed, or...” He shrugged. “Perhaps the Wardens could safeguard it?”

Your shemlen mage. It did not escape Vashti’s notice that her other battle-companion was not mentioned. She frowned thoughtfully. “Not darkspawn, not our job. Demons...” She had the satisfaction of seeing Solan’s lips purse. “The allan’isa know best how to destroy them. Shall we station some on Sundermount, Keeper?” Ariane was one of the Dalish mage-guardians and demon-slayers; one of the best, in fact. Such a posting would likely include her, at least until safety was established. She knew damn well Solan had no intention of losing her.

“I think they are more needed here,” Lanaya interrupted again. “If her Keeper does not object, Warden, take Ariane with you as well. Perhaps she will see how the thing can be destroyed. If it cannot be destroyed, but only contained...” Lanaya paused, searching for an adequate solution.

“Keeper Marethari said the shemlen city there, Kirkwall, is full of Chantry templars,” old Nessal put in thoughtfully. “Some even came by to bother the clan. If you can find some, maybe they can be put to better use.”

Vashti nodded. “That, we can do. Finn is of the Circle and need not fear templars; Ariane and I have both been to cities before. If need be, we can find the templars in their home. A wise suggestion, Keeper.”

There was a silent pause; when no further objections or suggestions were voiced, Vashti dipped her head respectfully to the Keepers. “Then we shall make ready and depart as soon as we may. Keeper Nessal, welcome home.” The hahren smiled kindly at her as she turned to go.

She was distracted, wondering if there would be time to speak with him about her father as he’d offered, and did not notice that Hamied, who had lingered a respectful distance from the meeting, had fallen in step beside her. “I did not mean to eavesdrop, Commander,” he began, and she startled, breath hissing in as she pivoted away from him.

He stared. “Abelas,” she apologized gruffly, hiding her slight embarrassment in a scowl. “You wanted something?”

“Yes. That is... if you’d permit it... may I come with you?”

She blinked at him owlishly for a moment, then gave a short, sharp shake of her head. “No.”

She started to walk away; he followed, brow creased. “Commander, perhaps you’re not aware, but --”

“You want to live in the Circle Tower, First?”

“No, but --”

“Because we will be moving through human lands and human ports. There will be templars. If they want to take you, my options are to let them or to conscript you into the Wardens.”

“Then I won’t use magic until we’re at Sundermount,” he insisted, keeping pace beside her. “Keeper Solan wishes me to bond with Ariane, and I can hardly make my case if I cannot see her!”

”No,” Vashti gritted again. She didn’t like Solan, didn’t want his First along. Had never fought with him, didn’t want an unknown factor in what might be a difficult battle. Didn’t want his courtship to distract from the mission. And it would. He would be courting, Ariane would pay some amount of attention to it, Finn would gossip like an old woman, and she would seethe. There was a demon to be fought, and none of them needed such drama on the side.

“I don’t understand your stubbornness!” Hamied exclaimed in frustration. “Ma nuvenin, Commander.” He stopped, letting her continue on without him.

If they were fast enough, they could be gone before he’d talked Solan into haranguing her about taking him along.

Modifié par Corker, 12 février 2012 - 03:32 .

[Corker]

And there is our map, showing the progress of our four stalwarts from Ostagar up the Imperial Highway to West Hill, just across the narrow Waking Sea from their destination. Vashti argues heatedly with several ship captains, none of whom want to sail to the Wounded Coast. The Dalish grimace and are at the point of accepting Kirkwall as their destination, but it’s Finn who insists they dock elsewhere. Pointing to the letter granting him a leave of absence from the Ferelden Circle, he says that he’s heard the Kirkwall templars are unusually strict and may confiscate it, and him!

So a decidedly shady-looking character operating a small skiff is found. The crossing is rough in such a small craft, and everyone, even the dog, feels ill. But the smuggler leaves them on the wild sandy shore as promised, and they begin their trek to Sundermount. Following Keeper Nessal’s directions, they begin to find the hidden signs the Dalish use to signal one another that a camp is nearby...

Seven years. Seven years since she had been home; six since Ashalle had braved the strange streets of Denerim to embrace her after the Archdemon’s fall. It had not always been a happy home, with the shadow of her father’s corruption and death lying over her, but she missed it all the same. Maren singing to the halla, Junar and Fenarel boasting about their skill with the bow, Hahren Paivel’s stories and the rasp of Master Ilen’s methodical work all wove together in memory, tied up with Keeper Marethari’s sonorous invocations to the gods.

“Are you excited?” Ariane asked.

Vashti jolted out of the reverie. “Nervous,” she answered, after a moment’s thought. The da’len her age had never even seen a shemlen before Duncan came; Marethari was much stricter about sequestering the clan than her father had been. What would they think of her now, having spent seven years among them? And bringing one into the very encampment?

Perhaps they should not approach with Finn. She could leave the dog with him and ask the Keeper’s permission to bring him into camp. That would be more proper. She turned to speak to the mage behind her, but Finn was frowning at something above the tree tops. “Those are big birds. Are they the flesh-rending sort, do you think? Can we avoid them?”

Vashti turned back around to follow his gaze. Dark, broad-winged shapes wheeled and circled in the sky. “Ravens, I think,” Ariane said. “Scavengers. They shouldn’t bother us.”

“A bad omen,” Vashti muttered, thinking of Fear and Deceit, the two birds Dirthamen conquered in the Beyond.

“There’s... a lot of them,” Finn observed nervously. “What lives - or I suppose dies - up here that would attract so many? Are there dragons?”

“Calm down,” Ariane said. “The clan has been here for years, I’m sure they’ve made the area monster-safe.”

Vashti stared at the sky, then suddenly seized Ariane’s wrist. “Something’s wrong.”

“What?”

She thought that if she turned her head, just a bit, she would see the Dread Wolf stalking her. “They wouldn’t leave a large pile of carrion so close to a camp.”

Ariane’s eyes widened, and she nodded. She had to gently tug twice before Vashti realized that she needed to let go of her wrist. The warrior drew her swords, and Vashti unlimbered her bow. Finn swallowed. “What’s happened?”

“Don’t know. We go carefully,” Vashti said.

They passed the statue of Fen’Harel, but no sentry challenged them. From ahead came the sound of banners snapping in the wind, but otherwise silence. No singing, no boasting. No stories, no carving. No prayers.

Perhaps they left after all. We will arrive only to find they have left for Ostagar.

The clan banners came into view; beyond them, the aravels were still arranged around a central glade. Of course, they had no halla. They would have left the aravels, walked...

A raven stooped from above, and settled on a corpse.

One body. Two. Three...

Vashti stopped in horror, her companions likewise going still. All around the campsite were elven bodies.

The Sabrae were dead.

All...

All dead.

She felt a hand on her shoulder and stumbled forward, away from it. Staring, floating somewhere just outside herself, she drifted into the camp.

“Maker’s breath! What happened here? ...Vashti, wait! It could be a plague!”

Vashti supposed that made some sense. She looked down at... who? Unknowable. The face was black char. Fire. Intense fire. The grass wasn’t burned. Probably magical. Or a dragon.

There was a soft rustle to her left; another raven alighted, hopping toward one of the dead.

She stopped floating, pulled back into herself by the raging need to kill the vile bird that would disturb the dead. Her bow was already in her hand; she nocked and arrow and loosed.

She did not wait to see that she made her target before swinging around, sighting on another raven. And another, and another, until the birds took to the air. And then she shot them out of the sky, letting them fall like soft black hail, until her quiver was empty.

Then she fell down and cried, because her quiver was empty and now the ravens would come to eat her dead, her clan, her family.

A cold, wet thing nudged her tear-streaked cheek; when she did not rise, the dog whined in her ear and licked at her face. She half-sat up, throwing her arms around the dog, old dog, loyal dog from Ostagar, another tainted creature saved from death and thrown against the Blight. The clan had never met the mabari and now they never would and that was horrible, too.

The music of chain and plate, the smell of steel and oil signaled Ariane kneeling beside her. “We will discover who or what did this,” she promised, voice low and thick with anger and a less personal, but no less real, grief, “and we will pour out the burning fury of Elgar’nan upon them.”

Vashti sobbed and nodded agreement into the dog’s shoulder.

They stayed like that, huddled wordlessly on the damp ground (how could spring flowers bloom in earth so watered by blood?). “I think Finn is making graves,” Ariane said at length. “He is strong with stone magics.”

“Good,” Vashti managed to choke out. Of course, they would need to give the dead proper ---

”Ah! Ow! Ow ow ow!”

“Go away, shemlen, before I kill you!”

Both women and the dog came to their feet at the sound of Finn’s shouts and the high, young voice. The mage was staggering back away from his work, not far from the last aravel up the mountain. His staff was on the ground, and he clutched at his left shoulder, blood seeping from between his fingers.

“Atisha! Atisha!” Ariane had the presence of mind to call for peace in the Dalish tongue.

“What? Who’s there?” A parti-colored face, soft and young, and top limb of a bow appeared over the rear of the aravel. “Go away! Leave us! Many hunters will return soon, you should go now!”

“Hunters?” Vashti croaked, heart lifting in hope. Could there be other survivors?

“Da’len,” Ariane sheathed her weapons and held up empty hands, “I am Ariane, of Solan’s clan. Our clans met five, six years ago. This is your clan-sister, Mahariel. Aneth ara.”

“Why did you bring this shemlen here?” the child demanded.

“He’s a friend,” Ariane said, daring to move closer. “He wants to help the dead to pass Beyond, to bury them properly.”

“I’ve been trying,” the boy said, bow wavering. “It’s... it’s very hard...”

“Creators, you’re so young.” Then Ariane gasped. “Tamlen?”

Vashti felt her knees go weak and her throat close up, and the boy raised his bow again. “How’d you know my name?”

“I said, our clans met a few years ago. You were a baby. They let me hold you for a bit, and I remember your name.”

“Are you going to kill the people who did this?”

“Yes.”

“Then... then all right.” Tamlen disappeared from sight momentarily, and Finn - now seated on the ground and still clutching his shoulder - quietly healed himself. The aravel’s door opened, and the boy came warily out.

His face was half-covered in ash - an imitation, Vashti realized, of Falon’Din’s vallaslin. If he had felt the need to mark himself as a man, then... “You said the... that hunters would be returning?”

He shook his head, and the new-born hope withered. “I was trying to scare you. There’s not... nobody else... I tried to do the rites by myself but it takes a really long time to dig. Ah-abelas...”

Ariane knelt down so that she was his height, and reached out a hand to him. “Tamlen. It’s all right.”

He took her hand hesitantly, then looked at Vashti. “But you’re really Mahariel? Keeper said you are a great warrior. They were witches who were here, who did this. Can you kill witches?”

Awkwardly, Vashti knelt down, too. “Tell me who they are, and they will pay.”

The boy closed his eyes to remember. “There were two shemlen, a woman with dark hair and a man with light. Keeper knew them, and so did others in the clan. And they had a Dalish woman with them.” He opened his eyes. “I think she must be the witch Keeper warns us about. She used to be one of us, but went to dark places.”

Vashti’s mouth went dry. “Merrill?”

Tamlen frowned. “A lot of people were saying that name. Is that the witch?”

“Perhaps.” It tallied with what Keeper Nessal said had happened, but she hoped there would be some other way to explain this. Keeper Marethari as much Merrill’s mother as Ashalle had been hers; she couldn’t understand how a First could turn on her own people like this. “Did they say any other names?”

He shook his head. “When they left, I asked Mother who the shemlen were. She just told me to stay away from them. And then they left, and everyone was happy at first. But then someone said the Keeper was missing, and some of the hunters gathered and went up the mountain to search for her.  Some of them came back,  fighting. With the two shemlen and the witch, who were all throwing fire and lightning and... and...” Tamlen’s eyes grew bright with tears, and he looked down at the ground.

“You are very brave,” Ariane said softly.

“No I’m not!” the boy answered, hands balling into fists. “Mother hid me in the aravel and told me not to come out, and I just hid in there! I didn’t do anything! I just hid!”

“Da’len.” Ariane tried to draw him into an embrace, but he pushed her away. “You weren’t meant to fight three mages. Your mother’s spirit rejoices that you were spared.”

Who had his parents been? Did Variel finally bond? Junar and Maren, blessed by the Creators at last? How could Ariane sit there and speak of ‘his mother’ when she didn’t even know?

It was an unreasonable anger; she shook her head as if it might toss it aside. “When did this happen? And where did the mages go?”

“Three days,” the boy answered. “It was three days ago. And I don’t know. The shemlen city, maybe?”

The plan fell into place like slabs of iron, solid with purpose to wall off the pain. “We can start with the templars. Ask them about any Circle expeditions out here, or any powerful apostates they’re aware of.”

“You... you’re going to go into the shemlen city?” Tamlen stared at Vashti with wide eyes. “But... we’re not to go into such places. We’ll get sick and our ears will get flat!”

“It will be hard to do what needs to be done with a child in tow,” Ariane murmured. “But we can’t just leave him here by himself.”

Vashti considered, then summoned the dog with a glance. As he bounded over, tongue lolling out, Tamlen scrabbled to get behind Ariane. “Mythal protect me, it’s the Dread Wolf!”

“This is a mabari,” Vashti said. “Dog, this is Tamlen. He is my clan-brother.” The dog whuffled in the child’s direction, then barked. “You will care for him?” The dog barked twice and bounced around happily, stump tail wagging. “And if we don’t return, can you take him home?”

The dog stopped bouncing, put his ears back and whined. “Just in case,” Vashti reassured him. He whined again and licked his nose, but barked. “Good dog,” she said. “Tamlen,” she turned to the boy, who was watching their conversation with disbelief, “we can make you a small camp and provision it. The dog will guard you well, as he has guarded me in all my battles.” The dog barked twice, obviously pleased with the commendation. “We will bury the dead, then go to the city. We will return in a week and tell you how we fare.”

“Will he bite me?” the boy asked.

“If you break your leg and he has to pull you to safety in his jaws, his teeth will still not break your skin,” Vashti promised. “He has the soul of a halla, this dog.” That earned her a puzzled whine, but she disregarded it.

“Aneth ara, Dog,” Tamlen said, as the mabari slowly came closer to him and, sitting, leaned against his leg. The boy tentatively stroked the great wide-muzzled head, and the dog grinned, panting theatrically.

__________________________

They put Tamlen to work finding branches of oak and cedar to lay on the graves, and then sails and blankets from the aravels to wrap the dead. He wished to help, to honor his clan, but they all silently agreed he need take no part in shifting the bodies.

Finn, uncharacteristically silent and somber, opened rents in the ground with magic, and helped Tamlen lay out the shrouds. With Ariane, Vashti found the members of her clan, bidding each an unheard farewell. They collected the family amulets to return to Ostagar, since - save for Tamlen and Vashti - there was no family to take them.

They learned he was Maren and Junar’s son, and so they were careful not to let him see their bloated bodies. And aside from the very moment she recognized her, Vashti could not look on Ashalle; Ariane mercifully wrapped her foster mother alone while she went away to be sick.

Even when all the Sabrae in camp were in the ground, and the prayers to Falon’Din were said, they were not done. After resting the night, they left Tamlen with the dog and set off up the mountain, in search of the party of hunters who had first gone to find Marethari.

The trail led far up Sundermount, to a glade just outside a cavern. Stout-hearted Fenarel was there, he who had demanded that she take him along to search for Tamlen. It was all the clan found now, save the Keeper and First.

Marethari was in the cavern, her body prone before a hideous statue of some forgotten god. Finn arrowed to the statue immediately as they lifted the dead Keeper onto a shroud. “From the dawn of the Tevinter Empire, I’d say. This is ancient. And look... felandaris, right over there. That means the Veil is thin here. I suppose it’s rather thin all around here but... it feels... It reminds me of Eleni Zinovia but not quite.”

“Is this really the time, Finn?” Ariane asked irritably.

“It is if this is where that bound demon was held."  Finn glanced around the cavern. "Because... I don’t think it’s here anymore.”

“Creators!” Almost dizzy, Vashti put out a hand to steady herself against the wall. The clan had remained here to guard the place against Merrill.  Merrill returned, Marethari tried to stop her and... “Must be it. Demon turned her against the clan.”

“An abomination,” Finn said quietly.

[Corker]

Chapter 3

Remember Jowan. And what he concealed.

That was what Knight-Captain Cullen told himself firmly as he stood his post in the Gallows’ courtyard. They’d caught the blood mage and relaxed, thinking the problem solved, when the true extent of it had festered in the darkness.

Just because Thrask’s rebels were caught didn’t mean the Knight-Commander wasn’t right to ask him to investigate more potential insubordination. They had to be vigilant, aware, questioning. It was very reasonable, even if the Knight-Commander herself -

She’s been betrayed by her own men; of course she was upset. Angry, even. That’s... natural. A little... over-caution is better than the see-no-evil approach we took at Lake Calenhad.

His thoughts turned back seven years, to what he’d seen and heard before the mages left for Ostagar, wondering again what he, or any of them, might have looked for to prevent that tragedy. Senior Enchanters Uldred and Wynne were returning through the Tower main doors in his mind’s eye when he gave himself a shake. No use maundering. It just twists the brain; for a moment there, I would have sworn that mage was Florian Aldebrant.

Cullen’s eyes narrowed, trying to place the fellow - and then widened. It was Florian! He stepped forward, a friendly greeting on his lips.

It died as he caught sight of the two elves behind him. No, not the two; just the dark one. His hand fell to the hilt of his weapon on instinct. There was something very wrong about her, something that made him think of demons and blood magic.

Florian stopped, open-mouthed with surprise. “Ser Cullen? It is Ser Cullen, isn’t it?” The mage swallowed and glanced at the templar’s hand, white-knuckled on his sword. “I’d heard you were... better.”

“Stand aside,” he growled, moving to interpose himself between the Ferelden mage and the ‘elf.’ Other templars, and some mages, in the courtyard were beginning to look their way. Good. “You don’t know what this is.”

“Warden-Commander Vashti Mahariel of the Dalish, templar!” the creature barked at him, hands not far from her own weapons.

“You’re no Grey Warden,” Cullen said, but with less certainty. “I know you. From... from the Tower.”

“Yyyes,” Florian said behind him, quietly. “The Grey Warden who saved the Tower? That’s her.”

“I... I... oh.” Cullen sagged, old nightmares swirling just below the surface of his thoughts. He willed them to stay there. “I... please forgive me. My memories from that time are jumbled and... largely unpleasant.”

“Don’t care,” she snapped. “Mages attacked and killed the Dalish on the mountain. Were they yours?”

“What?” Knight-Captain Cullen was used to exactly one person being short with him, and she was back in her office. “What are you talking about?”

“Sounded perfectly clear to me,” the other elf shrugged, and Cullen scowled.

“Excuse me!” Florian stuck an arm into the air for their attention. “Excuse me. Thank you. We’re starting over now.” He beamed at Cullen. “Ser Cullen, fancy meeting you here! Finn Aldebrant, don’t know if you remember me. I’m on approved leave from the Circle for research into ancient elvhen language and artifacts. I have a note.” He presented the carefully-folded parchment as if it were a great prize - which Cullen supposed it was.

Cullen took it, opened it up and frowned. “That’s not Knight-Commander Greagoir’s name on this.”

“Oh, it’s there, up at the top, next to Irving’s. He approved it, but Ser Hadley signed for my release when I left. The Knight-Commander was in Denerim at the time, I believe.”

“Looks to be in order.” He handed the parchment back. “Not that I’d expect anything less from you... Finn, is it now? But you’re not in Kirkwall to study elven artifacts.”

“No. What the Commander was alluding to is the fact that we went up Sundermount to meet with a Dalish clan encamped there.” Cullen nodded, frowning. Several templars had died while pursuing an apostate thought to be among the Dalish, three years ago - was it the same clan? “They were... all killed. By magic. Recently, about a week ago.”

“Maker’s breath! The entire clan?” He looked at the Warden-Commander. “And you think we turned some of our mages loose on them? That’s insane! We don’t let them go out for a spot of slaughter now and again!”

“Then who?” She crossed her arms and glared at him. “One survived. He said there were three: two humans, male and female. And...” Her lips thinned and she paused. “One of our own, female. Three apostates, against a clan of thirty-three with a powerful Keeper - they took no losses. None. Three powerful apostates in the mountains near Kirkwall. Do you know them, or do these walls contain your responsibility?”

“I would think you would be thankful that we do not routinely seek mages so far from Kirkwall,” he shot back. “We left the Dalish largely alone, as we have more than enough problems within the city. Including a cabal of blood mages who turned several templars and escaped to the Wounded Coast, very recently.”

“Where on the coast?”

“We’ve recaptured the survivors. But -” He held up a hand as the Warden took two steps toward the Gallows. “Upon reflection, I doubt those are your perpetrators. There was no Dalish among them, for one thing. And none of the survivors have mentioned anything about going up the Sundermount.”

She bared her teeth at him. “Do you know anything useful?”

Finn pressed a hand to his forehead. “Vashti? Would you...” The other elf moved to pull the Grey Warden back a bit and steered her away from Cullen. “Thank you, Ariane. Sorry about that,” he apologized. “It was her clan, you understand.”

“I suspect that I do know who your perpetrators are,” Cullen said in a low voice. “But I am also reluctant to name names when the description is so vague, and the charge so dire.” Finn looked at him oddly; Cullen sighed, knowing that it certainly wasn’t usual templar behavior to offer any sort of protection to apostates, whether or not they were guilty of mass murder. But Finn didn’t understand the politics surrounding the Champion. “Do you have any other information that would help?”

“The Commander knew the Dalish woman from before the Blight. Her name is Merrill. Dark hair, green eyes, Sylaise’s vallaslin. That’s, uh, that’s the tattoos.”

Merrill. The name was familiar, written on report after report concerning the Champion, and in a few reports all her own. Marian Hawke, Anders, Merrill. Human woman, human man, Dalish woman. Three powerful apostates.

Three powerful apostates they hadn’t been able to touch for years, thanks to the mess of Marcher politics and power that the city had become. This was clearly an opportunity - for justice or for disaster, he wasn’t sure which. The templars hadn’t acted against Hawke for a reason. But did those reasons apply to a Dalish Warden from Ferelden? And if she was the one who saved the Tower, saved him from the demons there, didn’t he owe her this?

“I... know the name.” Cullen studied the tops of his boots. “She’s a suspected apostate frequently in the entourage of the Champion of Kirkwall. Along with a known mage.” He sighed. “I’m sure you remember Anders.”

“Anders? Anders the Escape Artist? But he’s dead!”

Cullen smiled humorlessly. “Is that how he finally got out of Lake Calenhad?”

“No! He joined the Grey Wardens! Died defending their keep against a darkspawn attack, Vashti’s spoken of it. There’s a plaque with his name on it and everything.”

“We’d heard rumors he was a Warden. I thought it was a lie to keep the templars off him.” Cullen shook his head. “I’ve seen him. It’s Anders or his twin brother. He’ll be your male human. The Champion herself is the woman.”

“He was a healer! Maker’s breath, Ser Cullen, I worked alongside the man when he wasn’t in prison. If he wasn’t learning a new spell, he was chasing a, a...” Finn flushed slightly, “...a romantic interlude or trying to get over the wall. I saw what was done to those elves, and - ”

“People change,” Cullen said, silencing the mage with a level stare. “Anders is known to run a free clinic in Darktown. He’s also suspected of aiding the escape of dozens of apostates... and a few maleficar. He is a major figure in an underground movement that seeks to overthrow the Circle and possibly the Chantry with it. He is not the Anders you remember.”

“But... but... wait.” Finn frowned, brows drawing together. “You’ve seen him, you know he’s a mage, but he’s... not...?”

“He is a companion, possibly lover, of the Champion of Kirkwall, Marian Hawke. She wields considerable influence in the city, even,” he sighed, “enough to make the discharge of our proper duties... difficult. It would... also render difficult any sort of trial you might be considering. Particularly as the victims were not - ” human “- Kirkwall citizens.”

The guilty look on Finn’s face told him that the Warden-Commander didn’t have a trial in mind. The mage swallowed and stared thoughtfully past Cullen’s shoulder. “Maybe... with Anders involved... she’ll ask a few questions first,” he muttered. “Where could we find him?”

“Don’t bother with the Darktown clinic.” Cullen waved the idea away. “If they see someone they don’t like coming, it just disappears. The Champion technically lives at the Amell estate in Hightown, but our observations indicate she’s rarely there. Your best bet is a Lowtown tavern called the Hanged Man.”

“The Hanged Man. Sounds charming.”

“You’d best go quickly. Your Warden-Commander was... less than discrete in her inquiry. Some eavesdropping mage is probably already carrying word to the First Enchanter, who counts her as an ally. And you don’t want her to be forewarned.”

Finn grimaced. “Lovely. Just... well, I suppose we’re off, then. Thank you for your help, ser.”

Cullen nodded, watching the mage retreat to where the two sullen elves waited. If you’re successful, it’ll be me thanking you.

[Corker]

Is this guy for real? was all Varric could think as the newcomer and his party drifted into the Hanged Man. He looked like a sodding Circle mage: robes, big staff, the whole nine yards. But a Circle mage would have a templar or two with him, not a pair of... what the blazes... Dalish elves? Exiled mercenaries, perhaps?

Maker, he hoped so, for their sakes. If they were here looking for Hawke... Varric shook his head and downed his drink. Not smart. Go home, ladies, he willed them.

But he kept looking back at the man. Something there just... wasn’t quite right, but Varric couldn’t put his finger on it.

When Hawke came rolling in, Aveline and Fenris in tow, there wasn’t much reaction at the table: a quick once-over, the usual double-take on Fenris. They were looking for someone, but not one of those three. Maybe they’re after Daisy. That probably makes more sense, from their point of view. Varric was a little unclear on what happened on Sundermount, but that never got in his way when he needed to spin a good line of bull****. He’d find out what these strangers wanted, and if it was about Daisy, convince them to go elsewhere.

He didn’t get the chance. The others stopped to talk to a red-headed elf woman; Varric didn’t catch the conversation, and it was interrupted by the overly dramatic entrance of an older man with a squad of guards in Tevinter-styled armor. Fenris growled, “Danarius!” just in case anyone had missed the point. The magister almost ignored him, speaking directly to Hawke, politely requesting his property back. Drifting over, Varric reached over his shoulder, fingers grazing Bianca’s stock in anticipation.

But Hawke just shrugged. “If you want him, he’s yours.”

”What?” Fenris voiced the disbelief clear on all of their faces.

“You threaten my love, call him an abomination, and insult me to my face. I’m surprised you haven’t called the templars on him already, and I don’t intend to give you the opportunity.”

“Hawke, you can’t be serious,” Aveline protested. “Slavery’s not just illegal in Kirkwall, it’s wrong.”

Varric opened his mouth to add his voice in agreement with hers... and, on second thought, stopped. He shouldn’t interfere with other people’s business, right? If there was anything wrong with the way Fenris begged Hawke not to do this, or the way Hawke coldly shut him down, surely Aveline would do something. And she was just standing there, too. So things were all right.

They’d already worked it out, and look, Fenris was leaving quietly. He must have wanted to go after all...

A momentary dizziness passed, reminding him too much of Idunna, the Exotic Wonder of the East. Sure enough - a spattering of dark droplets graced the edge of the table, and Hawke’s left hand was casually hidden from view. The Champion signaled Norah for a drink as if nothing untoward had just occurred; Aveline had a hand to her brow and was frowning. “What... what just happened there?” the guard captain asked. “Where’s Fenris?”

“Catching up with his sister,” Hawke said blandly, watching them both out of the corner of her eye. “I’m sure they’ll be back in a bit.”

Varric hesitated. He wasn’t sure he particularly wanted to let Hawke know that thick dwarven skulls weren’t quite as susceptible to blood magic as she thought. Maybe he could distract her with those Dalish mercs and their mage, then try and slip out and get down to the docks. He had contacts that could surely...

He lost the thread of his thought when he looked over and saw that the table was empty. A quick look around earned him just the rear of the mage as the Hanged Man’s door closed behind him. The parting sight clicked, though, and Varric finally realized what had been so odd about the man: He was clean. Not just clean, his pale robes were pristine. Not a fleck of ash, a spot of mud, or a greasy streak across his ass from sitting on the filthy benches here.

Weird.

---------------------------

The robe ahead of his stopped, so Fenris stopped, too. “Do you know that creature, Fenris?” Danarius demanded. He raised his head automatically to look where the master was pointing. A lone elf, face pale in the evening gloom, stood blocking the way to the docks with two long blades raised.

“No, Magister,” he heard himself say.

“Hold,” Danarius instructed the guards around them as he raised his staff. “She looks sturdy. No need to be wasteful.”

Bright white light flashed under their feet, scribing an arcane sigil on the cobblestones. Danarius turned slowly, displeased at having his spell interrupted by a neutralization glyph. The enemy spellcaster was clearly visible behind them in light-colored garb. He stood at the corner of one of the warehouses; a crate or doorway must have concealed him as they passed. Danarius pointed and smiled grimly. “Fenris -- “

Before he could issue the command, a strange flower of ash and goose feathers bloomed in his throat. On instinct, Fenris judged the angle and looked up, toward the top of the warehouse. They’d stood still long enough for the archer to aim well, apparently. Danarius gurgled and clutched at the shaft; a second blossomed in his chest soon enough, and the magister fell to the street as Fenris watched with a strange detachment. Varania screamed and fell to her knees beside him.

“You want to fight for a dead man?” the warrior elf shouted.

Their captain shouted quick orders; two men peeled off, shields raised to ward off the rooftop archer’s attacks, and doubled back toward the mage. The rest stepped into formation and advanced. They wouldn’t fight for a dead man, no; but with Danarius dead, they could claim his property, sell it and retire to a life of ease.

He still had his sword; the main body of the mercenaries had their backs to him. But to fight would be to hope, and there was none of that left to him.

Another glyph flared to his right; in its glow, he saw the archer leaping lightly down from the roof. The repulsion field kept the mercenaries from reaching the mage long enough for her to begin to tear into them with long, curved knives; the mage ran, right to him.

“You’re hurt?” the man asked breathlessly, hands already alight with healing energy.

“No,” Fenris replied dully.

There was a wordless cry from the middle of the scrum to his left. The mage’s head whipped around. “Ariane! Hold on!” He spared Fenris just a quick, bewildered glance. “If you’re able, man, help!” Fenris blinked. “Help her!” the mage repeated, pointing, this time in perfectly accented Tevine.

He wasn’t Danarius; he wasn’t even a magister. But it was a direct order from a mage, in the language of orders, and it was enough to spur him to action. His lyrium brands flashed as he slid his sword free.

The Blade of Mercy. A gift from Hawke.

Hawke.

Rage bubbled up from under the fog of despair. He ran forward, swinging the greatsword around in a wide arc with all the pain of that unexpected betrayal behind it. A man parted at the waist as the sword cleaved through and past him, continuing on to slice into the fellow beside him and lodge in his spine.

Some of them turned, then, aware of the new threat, but he ignored their frantic jabs and slices. The blades passed through him with just a whisper of pain as he brought the greatsword crashing down again. And again. And again.

It was over in moments; he checked his swing before it could connect with the flash of movement that was his charge.

He frowned, shook his head. No, not his charge. That mage was not his master. An ally. An unlooked for, unexpected ally. And, he noted as she offered a grin and a handshake in greeting, a Dalish elf. “Thanks for that,” she said. “I really didn’t think they’d all fight.”

“I think I should be thanking you,” he said slowly. The mage came jogging up, followed by a swift dark ghost - the archer. Another Dalish. “Ariane, are you injured?” the human asked anxiously.

“I wouldn’t say no to some healing,” she replied, “but our friend here pitched in before things got too tight.”

As the mage saw to his friend, the archer jerked her head toward Varania, who was cowering over Danarius’s corpse. “Friend or foe?”

“I’ll handle her,” Fenris gritted, striding over. She must have seen his intention on his face; shaking her head, she brought her hands up protectively. “I had no choice, Leto!” she cried.

”Stop calling me that!” He didn’t want to hear it, a name from a life he would have prized beyond all things that she sold, turned over to Danarius and betrayed. The lyrium flared again in the dark, and he phased his hand into her chest and killed her.

He turned, and found he had an audience, faces unreadable in the low light. “At... least it was quick,” the mage said uneasily. “She... deserved that, I hope?”

“Doesn’t matter,” the archer said flatly. “We need to go back there and hope Anders shows up. Come on.”

She turned to go, but stopped when Fenris asked, “You’re looking for Anders?”

She eyed him over her shoulder. “You know him?”

“Unfortunately, yes. It was for his sake that Hawke gave me up to Danarius.”

“Hawke? That woman was the Champion of Kirkwall?”

Fenris felt as if he were the archer; the elf was suddenly taut as a bowstring, and if he said ‘yes,’ she would be away like an arrow. “I would be most ungrateful if I repaid your assistance by setting you on her,” he said carefully. “She is powerful, perhaps going mad; and yet, you have slain - “ He choked back my master. “ - Danarius, a magister.”

“We were going to talk to Anders first,” the mage spoke up. “Remember? Find out what happened, before the righteous vengeance gets rained down.”

“Vengeance? Are you speaking of his demon?”

”What?” three voices chorused.

“Vashti,” the armored elf reached out, paused, then settled a hand on the archer’s shoulder. “I think we need to ask a few questions here.”

Fenris nodded. “I will be glad to answer them.”

He was not surprised to find that they were there because of what passed on Sundermount. He had not been there, but passed on the tale as Hawke had told it, of the Keeper falling to the demon, and then the clan avenging her - or attempting to. So yes, that demon was slain, but also yes, there was an abomination about - Anders, bound to a corrupted spirit of Justice.

The archer bowed her head at the news, eyes shut tight and hands half-raised. The mage didn’t appear to notice, as he was too busy contesting Fenris’s account. “What? But that’s... that’s ridiculous!” he protested. “Spirits don’t possess people. It’s in the definition!”

“Perhaps your definition is wrong.”

“But... no, I mean, really, that’s the definition! Demons possess mages, spirits don’t. Ages of esoteric study have concluded that -”

”Enough,” the archer ground out, hands finally settling into fists. “The questions about Anders are resolved. We go.”

“Wait, wait, no!” the mage waved his hands. “Vashti, it doesn’t work that way. I’m... I’m sure the nice elf with the very large sword and the angry frown believes that to be the case, but there’s got to be -”

She pushed past him. “A darkspawn spell tore Justice from the Fade. Last I knew, he animated a corpse. Thought he died at the Vigil. Seems he and Anders left the Wardens together.”

“But...” The other two followed her, and after a moment of hesitation, Fenris joined them. She was going after Hawke, and he had never been one to let others fight his battles for him.

“I wanted to kill him,” Vashti continued. “But he had... done a great service, a good thing. It seemed poor repayment. I thought... the Wardens could watch him, stop him if he became dangerous. And then they said he died. I thought it was done.”

The Grey Wardens? This must be... Fenris frowned, trying to remember. Merrill had often asked Anders for tales of the Fereldan Wardens, because there had been two Dalish among them. One had been another First exiled for blind pride, a mage; so, not this woman. Which means she is the other one, the one from Merrill’s clan. Does she mean to make an end to her own clan-sister, I wonder?

The barrage of images came on without warning: a little girl, laughing; a young woman, crying; flashes of games and work and beatings and celebrations through all the years they had grown together; a sheet of paper, shaking in his hand; his hand, around her pulsing heart.

“Hey.” The warrior called from somewhere ahead; he’d stopped in the middle of the street. “You don’t have to come if you don’t want to. It’s all right.”

It wasn’t all right; she’d betrayed him. He still felt that, like a knife in his guts. He would have been on a ship heading back to Tevinter if --

“Broody? You got away?”

Fenris looked up; he saw Aveline’s familiar bulk before he picked out Varric’s form. “I did, with some unlooked-for assistance. Why -”

He didn’t get far with his angry accusation - Why did you just let them take me? Why didn’t you do anything to stop them? - before Aveline broke in. “Got away? What do you mean, ‘got away’?”

He stared at the guard captain for a half-second, the realization dawning just as Varric confirmed it. “They didn’t go out for a nice chat, Aveline. Hawke turned him over to Danarius.”

“Varric, I was standing right there and I don’t remember -”

“Blood magic,” Fenris muttered.

“Hawke’s,” Varric confirmed sadly. “We had to wait til she left to come looking for you. Glad we weren’t too late.”

“She left?” the archer asked. The trio up the street had stopped, he presumed to take the measure of the two newcomers. “Where did she go?”

“She didn’t say,” Varric replied easily. “But you shouldn’t follow her.” He looked at Fenris, intent. “Danarius is dead?”

“He is.”

“So you’re free. Really free. Don’t throw that away on Hawke, Broody. Go find a happily ever after somewhere that isn’t Kirkwall. They say living well is the best revenge, right?”

Fenris considered that. While it... grated to walk away from Hawke’s betrayal, as if it somehow let her win, wasn’t there a measure of victory in simply foiling her plan?

“This is not about him.” The archer had come closer. “This is about my clan.”

“Your clan?” Aveline asked, surprised.

“Whoa. Whoa, whoa,” Varric interrupted, and Fenris was suddenly very aware that he hadn’t shouldered Bianca. “If this is about Daisy’s clan then we really need to talk.”

The archer chopped the air with a hand. “No more talking! They are dead, what is there to say?”

Varric was calm, as he always was in these circumstances. And he was too fond of Merrill. “That they wouldn’t surrender or cease fire? That it was self-defense?”

“Say their murderers!” The elf glared at the dwarf. “Where did she go?”

Varric’s answer was lost in the awful unearthly scream that erupted, rolling over Kirkwall as a column of violet light pierced the sky. They all turned and stared, catching glimpses of huge stones circling lazily in the air - and then the light flared and went out.

The shockwave hit a half-second later, thunder and wind and rock. They threw themselves to the ground, all of them, as pieces of masonry flew overhead. In the distance, up in Lowtown, screams of “Fire!” began - lanterns and lamps, tossed by the violent wind, were causing additional damage.

“What was that?” the mage wondered as he clambered to his feet.

“Maker,” Aveline breathed. “I think it was the Chantry. Destroyed.” The guard captain shook herself. “I have to get over there.”

“We’re with you,” Varric said, and Fenris wasn’t sure if the dwarf was speaking for him, or for Bianca. So he nodded as well. “I can hardly tell Donnic I stood by while you ran straight into trouble.”

“And your new friends?” Aveline asked.

Fenris looked over. The archer, Vashti, looked shaken. “So died the Archdemon,” she said, almost to herself. “This may be Grey Warden business,” she said, more loudly. “We go.”

“This way.” Varric waved them onward, knowing as always the fastest route to any point in the city. Fenris wondered, as they moved out, what they would find in Hightown.

He suspected it would be Marian Hawke.

Modifié par Corker, 04 mars 2012 - 03:50 .

[Corker]

“What... what just happened there?” Aveline asked. “Where’s Fenris?”

“Catching up with his sister,” Hawke said blandly, watching them both out of the corner of her eye. The spell was a powerful one, but Aveline had a stubborn grip on reality and Varric was a dwarf. “I’m sure they’ll be back in a bit.”

Varric glanced around, as if expecting to see them, then shrugged. “Gotta love a happy ending,” he grinned. “After... well, after everything that’s happened, it’s good to see Broody find some family.”

“I just hope she hates mages as much as he does,” Hawke said, trying to staunch her bleeding palm under the table. It’s stupid that I have to hide it. I could just thrall them both and then it wouldn’t... Hawke cut off that train of thought. She wasn’t supposed to thrall old friends like Varric and Aveline, except when it was absolutely necessary, like just now. Why is wrong, though? And why is it so hard to remember why I drew those lines?

The pair stared at her. Was that an odd thing to say? Unable to wave her hand, Hawke settled for a shrug. “Otherwise, she’s come a long way for no purpose.”

That seemed to satisfy them. “Hey, speaking of no purpose,” Varric said, turning to Aveline, “I guess we’re free for the evening if Fenris and Varania have wandered off.”

Aveline frowned. “Relatively speaking. I have a husband to go home to, you know.”

“Of course. It’s just that -” Varric hesitated for the barest second, and Hawke’s eyes narrowed. Is Varric bull****ting? That was hardly a rare occurrence, but considering the timing... Had he avoided the blood control? If he was about to suggest a trip for him and Aveline down to the docks without her, she’d have her answer...

“Since we were all planning on chaperoning Broody and his sister, and now they’ve gone for some privacy -” He’s recapping. It was one of Varric’s tells around the gaming table; when he was summarizing information they all knew already, he was stalling while his brain worked on something else. “- I thought we might instead -”

“Champion!” The shout came from outside, then the Hanged Man’s sticky door flew open, admitting a raggle-taggle youth Hawke recognized as one of the Mage Underground. “Champion, I have an urgent message for you!”

Hawke bit back annoyance at the timing. Whatever tale Varric was spinning, the interruption surely gave him enough time to finish it. She might as well take the message away from prying ears - including her companions. “Your palatial suite is my palatial suite, right?” she smirked, pointing the lad toward the back of the taproom. “Hold that thought, Varric, I’ll be right back.”

She had to move quickly to keep up; the boy scampered across the room and barrelled up the short set of stairs. He waited, almost vibrating with impatience, until she got there and directed him into Varric’s room. “I take it this is urgent,” she said, shutting the door.

“The First Enchanter sent me. You need to be on your guard; the templars have hired mercenaries to kill you!”

Hawke put a hand to her forehead. “No, they didn’t. That makes no sense.” Magic-nullifying templars wouldn’t send mundane soldiers after an apostate, especially not after one as powerful as herself. She was tempted, unnecessarily, to use magic to get the actual message out of the boy. Ridiculous - he was eager and willing, and just needed clear instruction. “Tell me what the First Enchanter actually said.”

The boy took a few deep breaths, thinking hard. “Mages in the Gallows overheard two wild elves and a foreign mage talking to the Knight-Captain about you and your friends. They were angry; one’s a Grey Warden. The Knight-Captain told them to look here, in the Hanged Man.”

“A Grey Warden? Sounds like they’re looking for Anders, not me.” She’d noted the strange mage in the tavern earlier; his guards had been elves, hadn’t they? They hadn’t paid her any mind at all. But if what the messenger said was true, perhaps they just didn’t know what to look for. “I think your ‘mercenaries’ are out in the tavern right now. You head out the back while I take care of the problem.” Hawke smiled, and it was all teeth.

But her targets were gone. Anders, on the other hand, had arrived. “Sounds like I missed Fenris behaving like a civilized being,” he said as she drew near, a second voice under and behind his flesh one. She’d learned to listen for it - with her ears or with magic, she wasn’t entirely sure which - even when his spirit lay quiescent.

“Indeed. He hardly snapped or growled at all,” Hawke smiled. “Did any of you happen to notice the mage who was sitting over there? Where did he go?”

“With those two Dalish?” Of course Aveline had noticed. The guard captain looked to the table in question with surprise. “I didn’t see them leave... but they’re not there. Odd.”

“I would have seen them if they went out the front,” Varric said, waving towards the Hanged Man’s main door. “Maybe they took a room, went upstairs?”

“Why? What’s wrong?” Anders, perceptive as ever, asked.

Hawke’s lips thinned. She’d been paying attention to Fenris and Danarius, and then to Aveline and Varric - if the trio had left while the blood control was active, they might not remember what they saw. “The templars are getting more bold - and more foolish. Orsino says they’ve put a Grey Warden and some lackeys on our trail. There’s a human mage and two Dalish; I don’t know which is the Warden.”

Anders sighed and pressed his hand to his forehead. “Two Dalish? Both women?” At Hawke’s nod, he shook his head. “Commander Mahariel and Velanna, probably. They’re dangerous, sweetheart. We’ll have to be careful.”

And that was it. The last straw.

“Be careful? Have to be careful?” Hawke hissed. She shook her head. “I am tired of being careful, Anders. I am this city’s Champion and I have power. Why am I the one who has to be careful? Meredith, now she needed to be careful of me - and she hasn’t been, Anders. She hasn’t been careful at all!”

“Hawke, try to calm down,” Aveline said, brow creased with worry. “The Knight Commander -”

“The Knight-Commander has made a critical mistake, Guard Captain. She is going to learn her place, step down, and allow a proper viscount to take charge of the city. Tonight.”

Aveline did not back down easily, not when her mind was her own. “And who’s a proper viscount, Hawke? Who do we have who can stabilize this city?”

“I was thinking... me.” Because I’m the Champion, and I have the strength and the will.

“You? Hawke, that’s impossible! You can’t take a throne, you’re a -”

You’re a mage. A quick paralysis spell prevented Aveline from finishing that thought. It’s not blood magic so that makes it all right. She shouldn’t interrupt me. “You know, I’m fairly certain that won’t be an impediment at all. Come on, Anders. The new age of liberation begins here, tonight, now!”

She could feel his spirit-side surge with the promise of action. “You will stand with me against the Chantry’s injustice?” The echo under his voice was louder, stronger.

She clasped his hand and gazed into his dark eyes, where a lyrium-blue light flickered. “And I will rain vengeance down on any who think they will stop us,” she promised. The blue light flashed, and they ran out the door together.

Varric downed his drink. “That,” he nodded at the swinging door, “does not sound good.” He glanced up at Aveline, still immobile in the grip of Hawke’s spell. “As soon as you’re able, let’s go find Fenris.”

-------------------

“Champion! So you received my message?”

Orsino and Meredith bickered in the Gallows courtyard as she approached, Merrill trailing behind her uncertainly. She’d picked up the blood mage on the way; Anders had pointed out that Commander Mahariel could as easily be hunting for her blood as his.

The First Enchanter broke off to appeal to her. “She is paranoid, seeing blood mages under every bed in the Gallows! No matter what we do, it is never enough!”

“No, it never is,” Hawke agreed. “Knight-Commander, it is time for you to stop your ceaseless persecution of Kirkwall’s mages.”

“Paranoia? Need I remind you that a cabal of blood mages within the Gallows suborned a number of my templars and indeed, kidnapped your man? It is hardly paranoia to investigate how deeply the corruption runs!”

“And I have assisted your investigations!” Orsino fumed. “And they have led to nothing! The perpetrators have been caught, Knight-Commander. It is over.”

Meredith pointed a gauntleted finger at him. “I will determine when the investigation is -”

“Actually, no,” Hawke interrupted her. The Knight-Commander turned, eyes wide with anger. “As viscount, I will determine when the investigation is over. And it is complete, as of now.”

“You presume,” the templar sneered. “Even if you were the viscount, Champion, you would have no authority over the Templar Order. We answer to the Grand Cleric and the Chantry.”

Anders stepped out of the shadows, and Hawke smiled. “Yes. About that...”

The stone under their feet shook. Orsino, looking bewildered, said, “That was no spell.”

And then the alchemical bomb blew.

Red-violet light speared upward into the sky above Kirkwall with an unholy shriek. Meredith and Orsino both turned to stare in horror. “No more Chantry,” Hawke said.

Anders, eyes flashing blue, said, “No more templars. No more injustice.”

Merrill covered her mouth. “Creators...”

Orsino backed away from them both. “This... this is madness. What have you done?”

“She’s gone too far,” Meredith growled. Hawke smirked, readying a spell that would put the templar in her place, and -

- screamed as her mana was torn from her body. Anders had fallen on his knees beside her, the Fade-light in his eyes gone; Merrill was prostrate on the ground. Shaking, half-blinded by tears, she reached for her blooding knife, only to have it fall from her numb fingers and clatter on the marble courtyard.

“I have been remiss in my duty for too long,” Meredith said, approaching with a strange red blade drawn. Red lyrium! Hawke could feel its power calling to her. She couldn’t reach it, couldn’t reach any power that might keep that blade from her neck -

Except one. One who had been waiting for her for years, for Ages, the unsleeping guardian of the city. Hawke knew her, had heard her ancient voice sounding in her dreams, ever since she had found Tarohne’s hidden volumes of dark mysteries. She had been her tutor in the sacred mysteries of blood, asking for nothing in return for the power granted... but returning in the dark of the morning to whisper of conquest and domination and a life without fear. Summoned by the sacrifices of Tevinter, she waited with immortal patience for the soul who would dare to serve as her avatar. And she was there, now, taloned hand extended to make a compact that would leave Hawke both more and less than she was now. It would be enough power to destroy Meredith, to remake Kirkwall, to save Anders.

Xebenkeck, I am yours!

Thunder boomed as the stones of the Chantry were flung violently over Kirkwall. The shockwave threw everyone to the ground, and when Meredith regained her feet, so did Hawke, red light spilling out from underneath her skin.

“You showed me the way, my love!” she shouted, her voice distorted strangely, to a horrified Anders. “The city knew what sort of Champion it wanted - what it deserved! What it was created for! And I am become that Champion!”

“Hawke... no,” Anders whispered hoarsely.

“And we see again that no mage can resist the lure of power.” Meredith crouched behind her shield. “First Enchanter, you will assist me in destroying these abominations.”

Hawke turned her fiery eyes on the elf. “For once in your pitiful life, Orsino, slip your collar. Stand with me! Anders - I come with Vengeance, for a superior people too long oppressed! It is lovely chaos and glorious change, a sign of a new order come to the world! Come, take your place beside me as we usher in this new and terrifying era!”

The apostate hesitated, his own reawakening guardian daemon twisting and writhing within him as it tried to resolve what it was becoming, and how far was too far. Blue light flashed, but before Anders/Vengeance could say anything, Meredith charged him. She lashed out with her shield, and the blow sent Anders sprawling.

Hawke snarled and flung her hand toward the templar. Ice, cold as the farthest reaches of the Fade, appeared at her command. She could feel Meredith’s lyrium-enhanced resistance, feel it crumble under the weight of her/Xebenkeck’s ancient power. The templar stopped, frozen in place, and it would just take one stonefist to do it -

Her spell was interrupted by a bolt of arcane energy, one strong enough to sear her mortal body. She whirled on Orsino, lips curled. ”Traitor.”

The elven archmage leveled his triple snake-headed staff at her. “On the contrary. It is you who have betrayed your humanity.” He cast again, one of the telekinetic spells that were his specialty, a constricting cage that would have ground her bones one against the other - were she not ready for it.

Xebenkeck knew secrets past any mortal mage’s ken. She held up her hand, palm out, and the crushing prison rebounded on its caster, holding Orsino fast in a trap of his own making. He could only scream once before the air was driven from his lungs.

“Hawke. Please don’t. Please stop.” Merrill had set down her staff and approached with open hands.

“Merrill,” Hawke said warmly, turning from Orsino. “You are one of my people. You understand the way to power. Audacity was cheating you, trying to escape his prison. I am here, manifest, with no need to trick or cheat or lie. I can give you your eluvian; summon spirits to whisper ancient songs in your ear, Merrill. Come; we will build a new temple on the ashes of the Chantry, and you will be its priestess, spreading new canticles across Thedas. Human or elf, so long as mage! A new empire, Merrill!”

“I... Hawke, the eluvian, the history... it’s for my people. Orsino is an elf, he is my people, too. Will you... will you stop hurting him, please, Hawke?”

Hawke sighed, glancing at Meredith’s fading icy prison. This was not the time for this conversation. “Siding with the weak? This is not the hour for compassion, Merrill. You will understand; I know you will. I had hoped for better. You want him? Here.” Hawke gestured, as if skipping a stone across still waters, and Orsino flew through the air, smashing into Merrill and sending them both crashing into a white stone wall.

The ice cracked and gave way; Meredith wasted no time in charging her...

---------------

Aveline led the mad, hasted (courtesy of the mage) dash along the docks. Traders and merchants stood on the decks of their ships, staring towards where the Chantry had been and debating the state of the wind and tides. They didn’t know what had just happened, and most didn’t want to stay to find out.

The gate separating this harbor from the seaward approach to the city would be coming up soon. Seven years ago, she’d arrived in Kirkwall on the other side of the gate, trapped there with the other refugees who couldn’t afford to have it opened, to access the harbor like a legitimate trader. If it hadn’t been for Hawke and her filthy uncle, she might have never gotten past it.

But now, as Guard Captain, she had the sodding key.

It was in her hand as they rounded a bend, feet echoing hollowly on the wooden pier. The gate was ahead, filled wall to water with the templars screaming for help. She bent her head and forced more speed into her steps, until she drove the key into the lock like a lance.

The gate swung open, and the templars stumbled back. Following them were more templars... but not. An arm was missing here; Chantry armor was blackened with arcane fire there; and all advanced with the swaying, lurching gait of the undead.

“You men! Shield wall! What are you, recruits?” Aveline bellowed over the confusion of combat, trying to bring the templars into some semblance of order. Some, still panicked, fled; others heeded her call and formed up alongside her. Shields together, they created a barrier that was protection for the mage and archers behind her. Bianca’s familiar tat tat tat rang out, along with the Grey Warden’s softer thwip! thwip! Bolts and arrows and the occasional flash of magical lightning arched over their heads, finding targets among the walking corpses. Fenris and the Dalish elf threaded their way past the right flank, harrying the undead and pushing them to either the sea or the shield wall.

The line held. They had to fall back, time and again, as more waves of dead templars broke against their shields, but the line held. The Ferelden mage poured healing magic into them, kept them whole, especially the poor sods on the flanks who got the worst of it. Some fell, but mercifully did not rise again.

Eventually, it ended.

They remained on their guard let a bit longer, but Aveline spared a breath to ask the templar next to her, “What happened?”

The man, panting inside his helmet, answered without taking his eyes off of the gate to the Gallows. “The Champion’s an abomination! The Knight-Commander is dead, we came too late. Knight-Captain ordered the Gallows abandoned so we can evacuate the area. But we got separated and trapped by those... horrors.”

“Evacuate to where?”

“Viscount’s Keep, Guard-Captain. It’s the most defensible position, after the Gallows.”

“And where’s the Champion?”

“Don’t know, Guard-Captain. Last we saw her was in the Gallows Courtyard.” The armored head shook. “Our orders are specific, ser. We have to get to the Keep.”

“Those,” Aveline replied, “are your orders. Not mine."

Modifié par Corker, 25 mars 2012 - 12:35 .

[Corker]

Vashti kept pace with the dwarven arbalist as their group charged up the stairs, into an alley off of the same courtyard where they’d met Ser Cullen earlier in the day. Ariane came to a halt ahead of her, with the guardswoman and the elf they’d saved; Finn was several steps behind. Weapons at the ready, they were all scanning the area.

Blood-stained stone was all that there was to see. Not even bodies lay upon the ground.

They advanced carefully, to the steps leading up to the mage tower here, the courtyard expanding off to their left. “There,” Ariane pointed up, at a place where magical energy flashed blue and red through the tower’s small windows.

The guardswoman looked at the window, then at the several doors that were visible. “We want to go that -”

“No. You don’t.”

Vashti turned, scowling, at Finn’s pronouncement. It was all well and good for him to correct their speech or to lecture them on one point of history or another, but when it came to storming a mage’s tower... But her anger changed to alarm at his expression. He wasn’t looking at the tower; he was staring out into the center of the courtyard, unblinking, and his knuckles were white around his staff.

The guardswoman hadn’t even looked back. “Yes, I do. Begging your pardon, but I’ve been to the Gallows before. That way leads to a staircase that will take us -”

“To our deaths! You can’t feel that?” Finn pointed at nothing with a shaky hand.

“Coward,” the marked elf snorted.

“Shut up,” Vashti snapped without turning from Finn. “Feel what?”

“Vvv... Veil tear. Biggest Veil tear I’ve ever... you remember the ones in the Tower?”

Vashti nodded. Artifacts of Uldred’s work, they’d prevented Finn from conversing with a bound spirit. She and Ariane had held off the corrupted armored sentinels guarding the place while Finn had done some magical work to mend them.

“They were... ten feet tall? Twelve? The aftereffects of a major pride demon crossing over. That’s... that’s...” Out of the corner of her eye, Vashti could see that Ariane was staring now, too. Finn was at a loss for words?

With a helpless shake of his head, the mage lifted and dropped his staff. Pale violet light ran in a line from where it struck the stone, across the courtyard - and then up, into the sky. Twisting, fading into dim sheets of light, it described a Veil tear nearly as tall as the Gallows standing opposite.

“We are not equipped to handle... whatever that was and sweet Andraste, yes,” he nodded his head for emphasis, cutting her off before she could do more than purse her lips, “I know what else you’ve fought and killed, Vashti. This is a bad idea. A very, very bad idea.”

Now the guardswoman did round on him. “Do you have a better one?” she demanded.

“I... I’d need to know something about it. The templar said it was an abomination, and there are ways of, of binding demons that are too powerful to kill outright, but you need information. And, and time to prepare things. I can’t... it’s not something I can do right here, right now, with no knowledge of your Champion or the demon, and nearly out of mana besides.”

“We have killed demons before,” the elf said, his disdain obvious. “They fall to the blade like anything else.”

Between the moonlight and the light coming from the Veil tear, Vashti could see Finn’s pale skin flush. He jabbed a finger at her. “That is the Hero of Ferelden. She killed a corrupted Old God. And I am telling her that this is a bad idea. Do you understand?”

“It’s like those scrolls we found, last month. With the bloody handprints,” the dwarf interrupted, realization coloring his voice. “That was a pride demon, too.”

“And you killed it,” the elf said flatly.

“Huh. Barely.” The dwarf shook his head. “If a pride demon makes a ten-foot purple light-show, and we’re dealing with that,” he gestured at the enormous tear, “I think the mage is onto something.”

The guard pressed her lips together. “You think we should retreat, Varric?”

“I think we shouldn’t blindly charge ahead. A related concept,” he acknowledged with a shrug, “but not exactly the same.” He cocked an eyebrow at Finn. “What information do you need, exactly, to -”

The explosive crack! of shattering stone interrupted him.

------------------

Agatha crouched behind a toppled Tevinter statue, barely daring to breathe. The two abominations had overlooked her thus far, and if they didn’t bring the entire roof down on her head, she might make it out of the Great Hall alive.

Dust and pebbles rained down on her helmet as vast sorcerous energies flashed in the room beyond. Shouts, screams, curses and grunts did little to tell her what the two combatants were doing. She eyed an open door, ten yards past the edge of her cover. If she ran for it, would they notice her and --

But the battle had paused. “You know I hate it when we fight.” The echoing, distorted voice was Kirkwall’s Champion, but also something else.

“Stop this charade, demon! You are not Marian!”

The laughter, cruel and knowing, that came in reply made Agatha wish she could cover her ears. “And you’re not Anders. We are who we were, and more. I know you understand me.”

“I understand your kind. You will take and take, until there is nothing left of her. And I will destroy you for it!”

Blue light flared again, but was snuffed out almost instantly. “Little spirit, far from home and too long denied your nature: you will do nothing to me. Not until you grow much, much stronger.” Footfalls, purposeful and even, echoed in the quiet room. “I will give you this place, these Gallows. It’s a prison, after all. What better place to put those who unjustly imprisoned the magi?”

“What? No, I do not want any gift from -”

“What did they do, in those dark rooms at night? What screams have these walls heard, what tears and blood have slicked the floors? Doesn’t it call to you, the need for vengeance?”

“I... no, the Chantry... change will come now, it doesn’t matter. There’s no need -”

“Isn’t there? Isn’t there a need to punish? The templars, their hands red with blood? The rulers, who permitted it? The mothers and the fathers, not only standing by while their children were dragged off to a lifetime of servitude and abuse for no crime, but then piously thanked the Maker for the vigilance of his templars? And there they go to the Chantry, to sing to the Maker and put their coppers into the sisters’ hands, all of them sheep only too glad to see someone else, anyone else, pay the price so that they can maintain their delusions of safety in this world?”

”Stop it!”

Agatha had served the Order many years, had hunted and captured a score of maleficar. Most she had slain on the spot, but duty had sometimes required that one be interrogated. She thought herself hardened to cries of pain, to piteous calls for compassion. But the sheer terror and anguish in that voice-within-a-voice set her to running, running like a coward away from whatever could cause such suffering. It was a reflex, an instinct, and she was only a third of the way to the door before she was certain it would get her killed.

The man-abomination was on his knees on the floor, hands shielding his face as he rocked in place. What had been the Champion looked up sharply at her. “There’s a templar now,” she said, and Agatha was four long strides closer to the door. “Looks like she’ll escape punishment for all her crimes... unless you can sort yourself out, love.”

Agatha slammed the door shut behind her, not entirely blocking out the screaming, and kept on running.

She pounded down the hallway, nearly fell down the flight of stairs at the end, and stumbled into one of the residential wings. About halfway down the hall, a knot of mages - about half children, from the look of it - were clustered around a cell door. Staves lit up at her entrance; exhausted, sword and shield lost in the Great Hall, she commended her soul to the Maker and his Bride.

But the mages held their spells. “Do you have a key?” one shouted.

Did she...? Agatha fumbled with her uniform sash. The key ring, secured to her belt with a fine chain, slipped free and dangled by her knee. She nodded at the mages.

“Bring it here,” the mage instructed, her voice impossibly level. Elsa, Agatha realized: the Knight-Commander’s Tranquil assistant. “We do not wish to leave any behind as we evacuate.”

The mages eyed her suspiciously as she jogged forward, jamming the Level Three key into the lock. She turned and pulled, and young Alain stumbled out. Guilty of blood magic and sedition... but she had liked Thrask, and if he had trusted the youth, she would follow suit. Elsa gestured to the adjoining cell, so she opened it as well.

Idunna, blood mage, guilty of facilitating the murder of a dozen templar recruits, shivered on the other side. Agatha’s hand dropped to where the hilt of her sword should have been.

“I forswore her,” the maleficar whispered, eyes very wide. “I forswore her and she’s coming for me. Don’t leave me here, please. At least show me the mercy Hessarion showed blessed Andraste.”

“Gladly,” Agatha gritted, but Elsa stopped her with a firm hand on her shoulder.

“My supposition is regrettably correct,” the Tranquil said. “Idunna must come with us. There is no time to argue, Ser Agatha.”

The templar hesitated, but stepped back. Elsa knew the Gallows records better than anyone; if she thought Idunna was necessary, Agatha believed her. “You came from upstairs,” Elsa continued. “Is the way not clear?”

“Very not clear,” Agatha confirmed.

“Below are undead, maleficar and abominations.”

Agatha cursed. “Then we’re trapped?”

Elsa tipped her head, then regarded the assembled mages. “Do many of you know the stonefist spell?”

------------------

Cracks suddenly radiated from one of the tiny windows like a parody of the Chantry sun. Varric spun around, leveling his monster crossbow at the ear-splitting sound. “What in the blazes?”

Another deafening crack! rang across the courtyard, and a half-dozen flying stone projectiles burst through the wall. They all ducked on instinct as the missiles flew overhead, crashing into various walls and grates before tumbling to the pavement. By the time Vashti had rolled to her feet, an armored figure dangled by fingertips out of the gaping hole in the wall before dropping with a clatter to the courtyard.

“Survivors!” the guard cried. “Move!” More loudly, she called to the templar: “City Guard! We’re here to help!”

The templar turned, startled, and held up a hand held palm-out. “She wants us to keep our distance, I think,” Ariane said, slowing.

“We don’t exactly look like guards,” Varric shrugged.

They watched as children were lowered out of the side of the building and dropped into the templar’s waiting arms. “Let us help!” the guard called again. The templar looked at their group, glanced up at the windows above lit by blue fire, and beckoned them forward.

There were perhaps two dozen mages in all. The adults came down faster than the children, lowering themselves by their arms and dropping, then tending to any bruises or sprains with healing magic. The children clung to each other, staring at the swirling, shifting light of the Veil tear. Some were quietly crying; a few clutched at their heads in evident pain.

The adults, muttering and pointing, were only doing slightly better.

The last woman out barely glanced at the column of light as she picked herself up off the stones. “Is that a Veil tear?” she asked, and a dozen voices murmured assent. She look to the guard, and Vashti saw she was marked on her forehead. That meant something in the Circle Tower, but she couldn’t remember exactly what at the moment. “UnHarrowed apprentices in emotional turmoil near such a large Veil tear is an extremely dangerous situation,” she reported calmly. “Guard Captain, you must get us away from here immediately.”

“That clinches it, then.” The guard waved a gauntleted hand over her head, and her companions fell into line from long habit. “Carry the smallest ones, and let’s move. To the Viscount’s Keep.”

[Corker]

In the moon-cast shadows gathered at the top of the throne room’s great vaulted ceiling, deformed trees shook in an unfelt tempest. Shapes, alluring and terrifying, slipped from tree to tree, making their way toward him with whispered threats and sweet temptations...

Finn shook himself out of his dozing half-sleep and ground the heels of his hands against his eyes. It was ridiculous, how thin the Veil was here. He’d felt it on Sundermount, but they hadn’t lingered there long enough for it to really register. Here in Kirkwall, he could find himself in the Fade if he just let his mind wander too far. While waking. That was just... wrong.

The dwarf, Varric, was full of possible explanations. Ancient Tevinter slave trade, rumors of glyphs carved into the city’s streets, mages in the Gallows, templars in the Gallows, and a highly suspect tale of red, madness-inducing lyrium under the city. He’d have to pass that one on to Dagna.

Assuming she was still at the Tower. Assuming he ever made it back to the Tower. Assuming they didn’t all just die here, like everyone had at the Tower, and you can have the power, power to stay safe, if you only reach out and take it...

He scrambled to his feet; some of the mages bedded down nearby stirred but didn’t wake. Whispers in his mind, movement always just at the corner of his eyes, sounds with no source... if there was a worse place to be a mage, he never wanted to find it. It was unbelievable that this apparently had passed for normal here for so long.

He should get some sleep, but that didn’t feel possible at the moment. Might as well do something useful, then. Finn carefully picked his way between the mages sleeping on the floor; only the very oldest had the use of the few cots they’d acquired. Then he was carefully picking his way between sleeping templars, the survivors still performing their pledged duty of protecting the mages from others, and others from the mages. They’d turned the left balcony of the the throne room into a miniature Circle Tower.

And just like in a Circle Tower, a pair of templars guarded the exit. They watched him come, and he nodded a silent greeting when he was close enough. “Finn Aldebrant of Ferelden,” he identified himself in a low voice. “Can’t sleep, thought I’d work on saving the city and such.”

It should have been a formality - he was technically out of the Circle, on official Circle Business, per the Very Important Note he kept close at all times. But one of the templars challenged him, poking him right in the breastbone with an armored finger. “It’s lights out. Go back to sleep.”

Perhaps the fellow thought Finn meant to light a spellwisp in here and wake people up? He tried to explain, “We’re working in the old viscount’s office, I won’t bother any-”

“I said to go back to sleep, mage. Didn’t you hear?”

Finn just stared for a moment, speechless. Really? Someone was going to pick now to start throwing her authority around for the fun of it?

Before he could draw a breath to argue, he saw a pale shape rise up from the floor, behind the templars in the right-hand balcony. For one panicked second, he was afraid it was a shade or wraith, before he made out Elsa. “Ser Moira,” she called quietly, and the belligerent templar half-turned from Finn. She came closer before continuing: “Knight-Captain Cullen wishes Mage Florian, also known as Finn, to continue his research at every opportunity. Please let him pass.”

“Oh. I, uh. Didn’t realize Finn and Florian were the same person,” Ser Moira muttered unconvincingly, and stepped aside.

“Get many Aldebrants from Ferelden in your Tower?” he asked as he headed down the steps.

“Mage Finn, please do not provoke the templars,” Elsa continued serenely, accompanying him down the stairs. She stopped at the bottom of the stairs and looked up at him, lovely in the moonlight except for the emptiness in her pale eyes. “They are on three-fourths rations of lyrium,” she said. Finn inhaled deeply; that explained the temper. “Per the Knight-Commander’s contingency plans, I brought a satchel of lyrium out from the Gallows, but it will not be enough to sustain the regiment indefinitely. We must retake the Gallows, and soon.”

“Agreed,” he nodded. “We just need... half a day, maybe a day, to finish preparing the ritual. From Ser Agatha’s report, we’re not certain if... the, the vengeance spirit,” because it couldn’t be, simply couldn’t be old Anders anymore, “is thralled to the Champion or not. If it is, we’ll need to move quickly once we start moving.”

“I understand. Current supplies will last out the week without further reduction of their ration. I thought you should be aware of the matter.”

Because just knowing about all the death and killing isn’t motivational enough? Finn pinched the bridge of his nose; he really needed a good night’s sleep. “Right. Thank you, Elsa.” She turned and wordlessly climbed the stairs, her message delivered. Finn threaded his way between ranks of sleeping city guardsmen - they’d moved the barracks into the throne room, because the refugees wouldn’t bunk near the mages - and slipped out the door.

He passed the provisions stocked here, in the throne room’s antechamber, where they could be more easily guarded. Idunna had told them all that she knew about Xebenkeck. Finn hadn’t wanted to believe her, had wanted to say that tales of ‘deep Fade entities’ and ‘primoridal gods’ were stuff and nonsense, but there was an eight-story tall gaping hole in the Veil that said otherwise. The demon’s name was an invaluable asset, something that would allow them to bind her to something without Finn having to cut off a finger, as some anonymous ‘Scholar’ had done.

Varric had told that tale, of the revenants and arcane horror bound to the three charms, which together bound a powerful pride demon. It was fairly cunning, as such things went - rather than simply hide the charms, the Scholar had essentially trapped them with the undead. Most tinkerers in the dark arts would have just gotten themselves killed before they could loose the true demon.

He wanted to get his hands on those charms. Together, the assembled piece was probably their best bet for binding Xebenkeck. Certainly, creating something from scratch would take more time, and more lyrium, than they could readily muster. Of course the problem, as Varric explained it, was that after Hawke killed the demon Hybris, she’d given two of the charms to her favorite companions - Anders and Merrill, of course - and kept the third for herself.

Which meant their best case was desperately trying to assemble the charms in the middle of a fight with a supremely powerful demon, after they’d stolen one of the parts off of the demon herself.

Finn really wished he had a better idea. But all the news the guards and templars brought back was that the Champion was gone underground, to the tunnels they called Darktown. At night, undead swarmed out of the grates and shafts that led down there, terrifying Lowtown even as the agents of Vengeance wreaked havoc in Hightown. He hadn’t the slightest idea how they might lure her out of there and up to Sundermount, where the ancient idol that was his other candidate for a binding agent lay.

At least they knew where Vengeance was. That abomination had holed up in the Gallows. And a thieves’ guild, the Coterie, had bartered its way into the Keep’s relative safety with news of a powerful elven mage directing some of the undead in Darktown; that gave them an area to look for Merrill. Varric provided maps of the parts of Darktown Hawke would have been most familiar with, and Idunna sketched out her old cult’s haunts. Reasonable starting points.

He turned the corner and saw welcome golden light spilling from under the door of the seneschal’s office. Bran worked odd hours; Finn wasn’t sure when the fellow slept. He knew there was some friction between the guard-captain and the seneschal, and Vashti’d stuck her large nose into the business at some point, but Finn let the man do his work and Bran let Finn do his. Quietly. It was a good working relationship.

He reached for the door when it opened, revealing the selfsame Guard-Captain Aveline. Her eyes widened and she shook her head, pointing that he should go away. Closing the door behind her, she put a heavy hand on his shoulder and steered him back as he asked, “What -?”

“We just took back another hex in Hightown,” Aveline said grimly.

“But that’s good news.”

“Bran’s familial estate was there. We... found his son.”

Finn’s mouth twisted. “Dead, I take it.”

Aveline wiped a hand over her face. “Anyone in the city’s government... anyone related to anyone in the city’s government... He blames them for not stopping the Chantry. Never mind that would have brought an Exalted March down on the city... But yes. Dead. Very. Bastard.”

Finn glanced back at the closed door, wondering how long it would be shut. He found that he had very bad estimates for how much privacy normal people required. Aveline appeared to mistake confusion for impatience. “Just give him... probably half a candlemark, knowing Bran. I know you’ve got important work in there, but it’s also important that the closest thing we have to a civic leader holds it together right now. He’s got his... uh, that is, his...” The large woman shifted her weight and looked about aimlessly. “...lover, I suppose is accurate, with him for support.”

Ah, yes. Serendipity was an elf, and somehow connected to the Coterie. No wonder the guard-captain was uncomfortable discussing the seneschal’s relationship with her. “No trouble. I’ll just -” Aveline, seeing that he wasn’t going to buck her order to stay out of the room, nodded and walked past him before he could quite finish speaking. “ - right, then.”

Well, there was the “stealing the charm from the powerful demon” problem. He didn’t need his notes to pore over that. Their best chance, as he saw it, was to hope that Ariane could smite it and stun it, giving them a moment to find and take the charm. What they lacked was a backup plan, in case the smite didn’t work. Which - given the distressing absence of the Knight-Commander from the field - seemed a real possibility.

Finn paced absently down the stairs, dimly aware of the returning guards and templars clanking past him. Of all of them, he had the highest hopes for Vashti being able to do the job. The demon was far stronger than him, magically, but it would still be limited by Marian Hawke’s physical senses. And the Dalish Warden was particularly adept at hiding and sneaking. With the warriors drawing the demon’s attention, and him healing the results of that attention, they might just have a chance to -

- walk directly into someone’s breastplate. Finn stumbled back, arms pinwheeling, blinking in surprise as his reverie was roughly interrupted. “Watch where you’re going,” Fenris snarled at him.

At that anger, the good-natured apology on Finn’s lips evaporated. “Or you could watch where you’re going,” he shot back instead. Which was ridiculous, but sounded killing in his head.

“I suppose you think I should make way for a mighty mage, then?”

“I think you’re belligerent! And when have I given the slightest impression that I think I’m a better mage than you?”

The elf narrowed his eyes. “What?”

“I mean, I think I’m a pretty good mage, glyphs and healing especially. But I understand that the Fade shroud is a particularly difficult piece of -”

The Veil rippled again as Fenris’s vallaslin flashed blue, and all Finn could think was ”Showoff” as one taloned gauntlet grabbed the front of his robe and shoved him into a wall.

He looked down in horror. His robe. His especially enchanted, favorite robe! “Don’t rip it!”

“I am no mage.” Fenris ground the words out, and for one terrible second, Finn thought that he might spit. On him.

“Is there another term you’d prefer I use?” Finn felt a bit sheepish now. Every time he thought he knew how to conduct himself respectfully among the Dalish, something new came up. “I think the Keepers in the Hinterlands call practitioners of the art ‘arcane warriors.’”

A guard trudged past and lightly punched the elf on the shoulder. “Put the healer down. We like healers.” Fenris growled something inarticulate after her, but removed his hand. Finn smoothed and straightened his robe, relieved that there were no tears.
“I am not a mage,” Fenris repeated, glowering at him.

Finn shook his head, exasperated. “But you pull the Veil around yourself until you’re only half in this world! I’ve felt you do it several times now. How is that even possible unless -”

Fenris thrust his arm forward again and Finn flinched back against the wall, but the elf only pointed to one of the blue-white lines of his strange vallaslin. “That is lyrium, mage, burned into my flesh by my former master. That is how it is possible.”

“Lyrium? But lyrium’s toxic. Must be compounded somehow...”

Finn automatically reached up to investigate this new mystery with touch as well as sight, questions tumbling around in his mind. How could lyrium be implanted this way? How was Fenris not dead? Was this a direct effort to replicate the ancient elven mage-warrior discipline? Did that mean there were other sources of knowledge about it? Where were those sources?

A painful, viselike grip around his wrist interrupted that line of thought. Startled, Finn looked up and found Fenris’s nose within a finger’s width of his own. “I am not your experiment to poke and prod. I am a free man, no longer a slave, and I will not be handled like a thing.”

It dawned on Finn that it wasn’t so much anger or belligerence in those green eyes as it was simmering rage. Master, slave, mage, experiment, burned... the words Fenris chose to use clicked into place in the linguist’s head, and Finn’s eyes widened. “The lyrium... It wasn’t voluntary.”

“No,” Fenris sneered, releasing Finn’s wrist with a shake that sent it back down to his side. “It was not.”

“That’s... that’s unconscionable.”

Fenris straightened up. “Danarius’s conscience permitted that and more. That is what happens when mages are given power.”

Finn opened his mouth to argue - that historically, non-mage rulers were capable of all manner of atrocity, and some of the archons had introduced needed reforms into the Tevinter Empire - but for once, thought the better of it. His robe might not survive the discussion. “Not a mage. Got it.”

“Good.” Fenris stalked off after the departing guards, leaving Finn alone in the darkened foyer.

[Corker]

“The templars will engage the apostate mages surrounding the Gallows,” Knight-Captain Cullen said. “There’s surely blood mages among them, and this is over before it starts if they get control of you.”

Vashti nodded, staring intently at forbidding building still several hexes away.  They were about to leave the safe areas and enter those controlled by the rebel mages; this was one final chance to repeat the battle plan and make any changes.  “We’ll go into the Gallows, find the abomination, and kill it.”

“Will you reconsider taking me along?” Cullen asked.

Vashti shook her head. “Ariane is an allan’isa; she can do what you templars do.”

“Having more than one templar is a good idea, under the circumstances.” Cullen crossed his arms. “And he’s killed many of my men.”

“If this doesn’t work, the templars will need leadership - to fight or to evacuate the city. They’ll need you to provide it.” Vashti nodded at Ariane’s wisdom. Her own reasons did not sound nearly so pleasant - although he had, through personal strength, survived his last encounter with a tower full of demons, blood mages, and abominations, he had been damaged. She did not want to find out how badly in the middle of a fight.

“That... is a fair point,” Cullen admitted. “Although I would prefer to ensure that this does work.”

“If I have to sit this out...” Guard-Captain Aveline groused.

“You do,” Vashti said, pointing toward Lowtown. “When we have the charm, we will march with your guards to this entry to the undercity.”

“We’ll clear the undead en route. And,” Aveline sighed, “keep it clear for your return.”

“We appreciate that,” Ariane put in.

“Well, I’d feel awfully stupid if you actually managed to stop Hawke but got taken out by a skeleton when you limped back here.”

“Aw, cheer up.” Varric nudged her. “I’ll be here to keep you company.”

Aveline frowned down at him. “You’re not going with them?”

The dwarf gave his head a small shake. “Nah.”

“But Varric -”

“I’m a dwarf who knows his limitations. I can’t shoot Daisy, Aveline.”

The guard-captain placed a gentle hand on his shoulder. “She’s with Hawke, and responsible for -”

“I know,” Varric cut her off, turning away and shrugging out from under her hand. “Which is why Bianca and I aren’t objecting to this little outing more strenuously. But there’s more to the story, I just know it. She’s not bad.”

Vashti snorted; Varric eyed her sideways, but said nothing more. They’d already had that conversation.

"I've known her for years, and I'm telling you: she's not a bad person."

Vashti threw her arms open wide in pure frustration.  ”Some of them weren’t even armed! How could it have been ‘self-defense’?”

“Look, I wasn’t there. And I’m... I’m not sure I should totally believe Hawke’s account of things anymore. But it crushed her, I’m telling you. She mourned them all; not exactly what you’d expect from a monstrous killer, right? She never hated them for exiling her; she always missed them and just wished they’d let her go home.”

She crossed her arms and squinted, unwilling to let any of her anger go. “She could have. They were guarding the demon against her return. If she had just agreed to leave with them, they could have all come home!”

“It wasn’t just the demon.” Varric sighed and rubbed his temples. “You’re not going to like this part.”

“There is no part of this that I like!”

“Right. Well.  Merrill thought she needed the demon’s help because she was trying to repair a piece of that magic mirror you and your friend found.”

For a moment, she couldn’t breathe. The tainted eluvian that had stolen Tamlen, sickened her near to death, caused her to be sent out of the clan to the Grey Wardens, and even in fragments had turned another unfortunate clan into ghouls? Merrill had tried to save it?

She stared, and Varric shrugged apologetically. “She thought it was really important elven history. She said she’d cleansed the darkspawn taint from it - that’s how the demon helped her the first time. It taught her... it taught her how.”

Air came back in a rush. “Demons... demons teach blood magic.” Memories of an old, old shemlen mage, the smell of blood and lightning, and caustic fire in her blood. “They don’t understand the taint.”

“She lived with the thing for years and never turned into a ghoul, so I guess it worked. Anyway, it wasn’t really about the demon. It was always about knowledge, and preserving your history, and saving the mirror, and the Keeper didn’t want her to. The demon was... just a tool, I think.”

And then she laughed. Laughed until Varric left her, laughed until her stomach hurt, laughed until it turned into choking sobs again. Because there was a beautiful intact eluvian in the Hinterlands, taken from Drake’s Fall. Morrigan had said it would not work again - but they also had the Lights of Arlathan and Finn’s magic spell that would find the other eluvians connected to it.

If they had just come home...

She laughed, because someone had to be the Dread Wolf’s voice in this world, and it was a very pretty trick indeed.

The two captains departed to see to their troops, Varric stumping along with Aveline. Vashti nodded, satisfied, and regarded her two friends. “One of you has to come back. If this does not work, they will need to know why we failed.”

“Actually, one of us needs to come back,” Finn corrected her.

“And it probably won’t be me,” Ariane said, rubbing the back of her neck.

Vashti scowled. “You will live,” she said, more hotly than she’d meant to.

“Look.” Ariane held out both her hands, palms up. “If things are going so badly that we’re losing, retreating... you have the best chance of making it back.”

She looked down at Ariane’s hands, then up into her fair, open face. How could she suggest this? “No.”

“Yes,” Finn insisted. “If we get to that stage, it’ll be because I can’t heal any more. Which means I’ll be out of mana. No haste spell, no rejuvenation spell, no repulsion glyphs. I’ll be out of breath and overwhelmed in short order.”

“I would have to brute-force my way out as well,” Ariane said. “Of the three of us, you’re the one who can disappear, without magic. You can escape and hide, and make your way back without being seen.”

She looked down at her feet, head shaking back and forth, back and forth. She didn’t want to hear this. “No. No.”

“One of us has to make it back,” Finn repeated, slowly, mercilessly. “Unless you’ve already fallen, it should be you. Just from logic.”

It cut like betrayal. Her head snapped up, face contorted into something ugly, made of anger and grief. “No!” Finn fell back a step. “I will not... will not leave...” her “...you, either of you, behind!” Not like Tamlen or Varel or Anders (so I thought) or Ashalle and all of them...

“Perhaps I may be of assistance.” Outsider, intruder, stranger - a better target for her ire. She growled at Fenris, and Ariane lifted an arm as a barrier between them, giving her an incredulous stare.

Finn - Finn - simmered. “I’ll be having my throat crushed by demon-possessed corpses today, but thanks for the offer.”

“Both of you! Enough!” Ariane sounded more exasperated than irritated. She smiled an apology at Fenris (smiled, her face like the sun, and the light reflected from his eyes; he was handsome, strong and deep-voiced, and she smiled at him and Vashti growled again) and said, “They don’t always play well with others.”

“I would like to be included in this round.” Fenris’s return smile was a small thing, a slight lift of the lip, but unmistakable. “As I feel I incurred a debt after our last hand.”

“Our last - what, excuse me?”

“Hand. Of cards,” Finn said. Vashti almost nodded; Alistair had tried to get her to engage in shuffling the patterned pieces of paper with Leliana and Oghren during the Blight, but the game had been frustrating and complicated. “It’s a human gaming term,” Finn went on. “He’s speaking metaphorically.”

“Indeed. You did what I could not - kill Danarius.” He sounded so bitter, Vashti was momentarily unsure he was glad that the man was dead.

Ariane shrugged. “Well, he was a blood mage, wasn’t he? It’s not your fault if he thralled you.”

“He didn’t,” Fenris spat, glowering at the ground. “Not with magic. For years, I planned how I would kill him and end his dominion over me. But in the end,” his lip curled again, this time in a sneer, “I could not even raise a hand to him. And I will never know if I ever could.”

“This is really not the time or the place to work out your adequacy issues,” Finn said archly.

“That is not what I meant!” Fenris glared daggers at the mage. “I can only observe that I placed my trust and well-being too quickly in the hands of yet another mage. Perhaps I... ” He thought the better of whatever he was about to say and shook his head. “No matter. Hawke betrayed me. If I cannot have Danarius, I would have her. And more to the point - I will stand between you and her, should the worst happen.”

“You say that,” Vashti said, unconvinced.

“I say it, and I mean it,” the Tevinter elf replied, raising his head to look down at her. “Hawke does not have the... the hold over me that Danarius did. I will not falter. I will have victory or death - or I fear my ghosts will never be laid to rest.”

Finn mumbled something behind her that might have been, “Curtain, end Act Two,” but she had no idea what that meant. She turned to eyeball the mage. “Can you work with him?”

Finn looked over her shoulder, one eyebrow raised. “Yes, but I’m not certain the reverse is true.”

“Vashti, can I have a word?” She nodded and Ariane drew her a few steps away to speak confidentially. “I would like to have him along. He’s a strong sword; he knows all three of the mages but has no lingering affection for them, like Varric or even Aveline. And I...” She hesitated and glanced over at Fenris. “I think it’s right.”

If Finn and Ariane had no objections, she had every intention of taking the elf up on his offer to die in her friends’ stead. She frowned for entirely different reasons, but Ariane didn’t realize that and hastened to convince her. “He speaks more passionately about freedom than any flat-eared elf I’ve ever met,” she continued. “He understands the cages that cannot be seen, the prisons of the mind, and is trying so hard to fight his way out of them...” She looked at Vashti, earnest and open. “This will help him, I think. And us - I wouldn’t even suggest it if I thought I couldn’t fight well alongside him, the risks are too high.”

She only heard the last bit faintly, even as she nodded sharply and stalked back to Finn and Fenris, leaving Ariane somewhat bewildered behind her.

She knew Ariane had a compassionate soul. It was her way to feel the pain of the People, and it drove her need to protect them.

But she could have gone her whole life long without having seen that light in her eyes, the same light she had once seen in Flemeth’s hovel, that she had so long treasured as hers alone. Empathy, admiration, and a promise of better tomorrows was in it. Brighter than the sun, fairer than the moon, and so beautiful that when the haunting liquid notes of the Old Gods’ song pulled at her dreams, the memory of those eyes that diminished it to hollow echoes and empty promises.

She had thought, even if nothing else was possible, that those eyes, that light, had been hers alone.

It was not so.

“...and I don’t think I’m spoiled, thank you very much!”

Vashti brushed roughly past an affronted Finn and shot the elf he was arguing with a dark look. “Come,” she barked, because declining his offer would change nothing of what she had seen. “They wait on us.”

[Corker]

Chapter Warning for character death.

Finn resolutely did not look as they raced across the Gallows courtyard. Around them, templars smote the mages who appeared in the windows of the Tower; cleansing auras exploded in his peripheral vision as others dispelled baneful effects cast on the assault team.

They hit the main doors and stopped; this was the weak point in the plan, from Finn’s point of view. He unleashed a flying fist of stone at the doors, as Vashti spidered up the dressed stone wall. He didn’t expect it to work, and it didn’t - any Circle Tower worth the name had doors that could stand up to most spells a mage might use to try and open them.

So now they were stuck here until Vashti opened the things from within.

It seemed an achingly long time. Ariane and Fenris, both carrying bows, kept them from being entirely defenseless; any mage who showed his face long enough to cast risked a skewering. But there were only the two warriors, and a lot more mages. And more than a few seemed really personally angry that he was fighting alongside templars. He gritted his teeth and made a sound that he hoped was more “pained grunt” and less “girlish shriek” as another bolt of arcane energy lanced into him. At least it wasn’t a --

He saw the tiny glowing seed shoot from a high window the same moment some vast machinery within the walls began to clank, winching the doors open. “Cover!” he cried, trying to throw himself through the door before it was open enough and bouncing off again. Ariane caught him as she hurled herself forward, a streak of blue light impossibly arced over them, and the fireball blossomed behind them.

Flames gouted through the opening doors, but they were spared the worst of the spell’s fury. Ariane’s weight bore him to the floor, and her armored body covered most of his back; heat seared the back of his neck and ankles, but that was all. To judge by the string of exotic profanity the elf unleashed, she took the brunt of it.

“Ariane!” Finn heard Vashti’s shout, then a sort of flopping clatter not typical of the Warden.

“Vashti, stop!” he called, as Ariane rolled off him. Fenris, a pattern of blue-white lights in the dark, ignored him to close and secure the doors - which was fine by Finn. “You’re wounded?”

“Ice spells,” the Warden admitted. As his eyes adjusted to the gloom, Finn could make out the pair of mages sprawled, dead, on the other side of the hall, goose-fletched shafts embedded in their chests. “Hurts to move.”

That decided him. Finn called down enough healing energies for all of them, even if he didn’t especially need it. It was a strong spell to invoke this early in their sortie, but he thought it was better than facing down their foe with limps. “There,” he said, as soft white light sparkled momentarily in the gloom. “That should...” His voice trailed off as he stared, horrified, at what he’d seen in the brief light.

“The abomination shows his true colors at last,” Fenris growled.

Down the wide main hall, leading to the central stairs, a row of dead templars stood watch on either side. Each was pinned to the stone walls by a metal spike, driven through the forehead.

Right where the brand for the Rite of Tranquility would go, actually.

“But... but he’s a healer,” Finn protested, as Ariane and Vashti climbed to their feet.

“He is an abomination,” Fenris repeated, unlimbering his sword. “The question is, where will he -”

“Sh.” Vashti held up a hand for silence. After a moment, Finn heard it: the... silvery jingle of a bell?

Then it stopped.

“Wisp,” Vashti ordered, voice low. Finn summoned the magical light and, when the Warden pointed, sent it flying up one of the side staircases. There was a low growl, and the jingling again; he couldn’t see what the wisp was disturbing from this angle, so he dropped it towards the floor, angling the shadows up...

A roundish head with feline ears was projected up to the ceiling, just before the growl turned to a vicious snarl and the wisp’s light flashed. He hurried with the others to the base of the stairs, and saw a great orangish cat trying to claw and bite the spell wisp. It had clearly been biting and clawing something else as well, for its mouth and paws were red in the wisp’s light.

The Seheron tiger whipped its yellow eyes to them, and immediately ignored the wisp in favor of more familiar prey. It launched itself into the air, taking the stairs in one magnificent, terrifying leap that ended on Ariane. The allan’isa went down under its vast weight.

Blade, arrow and magical bolt hit the beast almost simultaneously. Its spine cracked under Fenris’s greatsword as Vashti put an arrow in its throat as its great jaws tried to find purchase on Ariane’s helmet. Finn suspected his modest contribution was probably unnecessary - until the tiger lifted its head and tried to lunge at the Tevinter elf.

It was too wounded to fight effectively; Finn dragged Ariane away from it as Vashti stepped back, peppering it with more arrows. Fenris backed away, then leapt forward again with another crushing blow. The tiger thrashed, jingled, and lay still.

“Nothing serious,” Ariane muttered to him as she got up, again. “Bruised from that hit, mostly. Creators, if it had gone after you, though...”

“Ser Pounce prefers to eat templars.” The voice was familiar, but changed - doubled, another sound behind or within it. Anders... or something like Anders... stood at the top of the stairs. The shape of the Tower’s resident runaway troublemaker seemed blurred to Finn; it took him a heartbeat to realize that wasn’t a visual effect, but a magical one. It was similar to the shroud he’d seen Arcane Warriors pull around themselves, cloaking their being in the Fade. But if Vashti and Fenris were correct, this was the spirit of Justice or Vengeance, trapped in the mortal realm, but somehow manifesting in/around/through Anders.

Finn’s mouth went dry as incontrovertible proof of abomination was suddenly before him. On some level, he’d thought the locals here had been exaggerating, or mistaken, confusing a spirit healer with... this. And yet... it still looked like Anders, not like the things the Warden had fought in the Tower. Did that mean something? Could the spirit be removed, perhaps?

Before Finn could say a word, the familiar zip! of Vashti’s bow told him the Warden wanted to end the conversation. He couldn’t see what happened at the top of the stairs, but he heard the sound of wood splintering against stone. “I saw you coming, Commander, just like I didn’t see you returning to the Vigil. I owe you vengeance for that abandonment.”

“Missile shield spell,” Finn muttered. Naturally. If he knew Vashti were coming for him, that’d be the first thing he’d cast, too.

“I should have killed you when first you violated Kristoff’s corpse, spirit,” the Warden growled, unsheathing her elven knives.

“Wait!” Finn cried. “Anders, it’s Finn, Florian, Flora, from the Tower, do you remember? We trained as spirit healers under Senior Enchanter Wynne together!”

“Pointless.” Fenris brushed past him, and Finn caught the elf’s arm. “Wait! Maybe there’s a way we can -”

The Tevinter looked back at him with disbelief, raising one hand to cuff him away. Violet-white light flashed from above; his brands alight, Fenris let go of Finn, staggering slightly as the arcane bolt hit him. “Of course I remember you, Finn,” Anders said.

“Wonderful! Then - ”

“That’s why you’re not all on fire,” Anders continued. “I wanted to give you a chance. The Circle never chafed you, but you must be intelligent enough to see how its policies of oppression must end. The boil must be lanced. Stand with us.”

Finn’s head swiveled to stare at the impaled templars across the hall. “Anders, this is madness!”

Anders sighed and lifted his staff. Quietly, as if speaking to himself, he said, “The right to shoot lightning at fools...”

Ariane’s invocation of Elgar’nan cut off abruptly as lightning forked down from above. Finn’s world went white with pain for a moment, then cleared; he’d barely gasped a breath when another strike hit him. Vashti and Ariane both were stumbling, trying to climb the stairs toward Anders but seizing every few moments. The fireball would be next, surely. Except... where was Fenris?

Finn caught a moment’s glimpse of the elf running up the stairs, huge blade hoisted in two hands. Lightning flashed down its length, then - crackled, sparked over his skin, following the network of lyrium straight down to the ground. Reaching the top, he swung and -

Everything went white again, and when he sagged against the stairwell, panting, he saw Anders, dodging, wave his hand. A wall of ice materialized, expertly trapping Fenris’s blade within it. He abandoned it without a moment’s hesitation. “I need no weapon to finish you!”

Finn flinched, expecting another lightning strike, but the tempest was over. Vashti and Ariane were already flying up the stairs; he followed, robes hitched up to his knees. He couldn’t help if he couldn’t see. Anders completed another incantation, and he nearly staggered when he recognized it.

At the top of the stairs, Vashti charged, her two dar’missu at the ready. Fenris had pulled up short, gone defensive - Finn knew exactly why. “Ariane, cleanse him!”

The allan’isa hesitated a bare moment - Finn knew she wanted to call down the fury of the gods on the abomination, it seemed to make the most sense - but to his relief, she listened. Dirthamen, the Dalish god of secrets, could untie the knots of magic - including the very nasty Spirit spell that was otherwise going to make Fenris explode in a mass of bone and guts.

The lines of a repulsion glyph glowed white on the floor under Anders, and Vashti came tumbling back towards them. Finn whirled, tracing the contours of the glyph of neutralization in his mind and trying to ignore the sick feeling in his stomach. Because even though Anders’ staff was on the floor, and his arm was dripping blood, his other arm still came down and -

And then Finn was burning.

He toppled over as the fireball roared around them. He didn’t scream only because his first gasp of superheated air scorched his airways, and now they refused to cooperate. In pain, terrified that death was imminent, Finn channeled all his remaining mana into a primitive healing spell. The burning pain subsided, his lungs expanded gratefully, and he opened his eyes.

Standing inside the neutralization glyph, Fenris, half his face blistered and charred, lyruim brands extinguished by the glyph, had Anders’s head in both his hands, twisted... twisted well past where a head ought to be able to turn. The mage crumpled, and the elf declared, “It is done,” before slumping to the floor and coughing.

Finn had lyrium. He had a big bottle to ensure that he was able to get through the binding ritual for Xebenkeck, but also several smaller potions for just this sort of occasion. He hated the stuff, knew what it could do in the long run, but... if there was a time for it, it was now. He fumbled one out, tossed the stopper and drank. Ariane tried to sit up, over to his left; good, she was alive. Vashti wasn’t moving, but he could hear her labored, gasping breathing.

The neutralization glyph flickered and went out. Anders’ corpse jerked upright, eyes glowing violet-red. “Vengeance is not so easily - ”

”By the fury of Elgar’nan!” Ariane, still half-sprawled on the floor, flung her hand out. Cold white light poured down from the heavens, and an unearthly scream echoed in the stone hall of the Gallows. When the light faded away, there was only stillness in the darkness.

“Healing, mage,” Fenris gritted. “Before something else goes awry.”

Modifié par Corker, 25 juillet 2012 - 02:34 .

[Corker]

Dust Town. Old memories of Orzammar’s slum came unbidden to Vashti’s mind as Fenris led them through the old mining tunnels under Kirkwall. But the comparison wasn’t really accurate. Dust Town, at least, had been the ruins of old, abandoned buildings - they had the basic shape and form to serve as homes, arranged in a way that sketched out a community. These were... just tunnels. Dark tunnels, acrid with the smell of ash and urine, with small piles of detritus - and dark splashes of blood - the only indication that people had, until recently, lived here.

Elsewhere under the city, they might still. Aveline and her men had cleared a corridor almost to the docks, where the reports of undead emerging from the undercity were thickest. The tunnels here were empty of life, everyone either fled or killed. The dead rose up again, demons from Beyond puppeting their limbs. They encountered a few, here and there; never in sufficient numbers that the clumsy, lumbering monsters were a threat to them. Whatever organized them seemed to favor the night, and Vashti recalled that it had been so at Redcliffe as well.

Fenris and Ariane paused, ahead; Vashti and then Finn approached to see why. “Perhaps we are in the wrong place,” Fenris said, not taking his eyes from the corridor ahead. “I had expected more resistance, more guards, if Merrill were nearby.”

”Something is nearby,” Finn said, his voice strained, and Vashti looked to him sharply. Of course he looked out of sorts; he always did, when they took him to places that might soil his robes. But the fine sheen of sweat on his brow and the darting of his eyes said that the problem was more profound than that. “The Veil... is in tatters here. Some of the demons may be coming across on their own, but I would suspect a mage is assisting, yes.”

“Or the abomination,” Fenris growled.

Finn nodded and swallowed. “It could be that as well.”

“Then we keep --” Vashti began, silencing herself as the sound of metallic clanking echoed from down the corridor. Armor - different from the rag-clad undead they had fought so far. Fenris and Ariane slipped ahead, putting distance between themselves and the archer and mage. It became impossible to separate the sound of their two warriors from the approaching menace, but then a dim red glow appeared at the mouth of a cross-corridor. Vashti frowned - Some sort of magic? - but behind her, she heard Finn choke. “Maker’s breath, what is --” he began.

The answer came as a revenant stalked out into the hall, an enormous red crystalline sword in one hand, a templar’s shield in the other. It raised its blade and Fenris was jerked off his feet, pulled by the thing’s dark magic onto the point of its blade.

Blue-white light flashed as the Tevinter elf countered with his own sort of magic, phasing his body so that he would be injured the less; Ariane charged and Finn steadied himself to support and heal them. The Warden loosed an arrow, then two, and saw them skitter and bounce off the dead templar’s armor. Vashti frowned as the second hit, thinking to draw her dar’misu, when she saw the walking dead file out of the corridor after the revenant - more of the unfortunates from this place in their rags.

Those would be her targets, then. They might not have been formidable adversaries by themselves, but neither Fenris nor Ariane could afford a distraction. One grey goose-fletched arrow after another sped down the hallway, striking the shambling corpses in their legs, shoulders and necks. No hearts beat, nor lungs breathed, in those rotting chests, but long experience had taught that if the limbs or head were rendered useless, the demon within could use its puppet for little.

The last corpse out of the side passage did not stagger or shuffle into the corridor; it floated. Large, pale pointed ears and a rictus grin were visible even at range and in the gloom; berobed and carrying a three-headed staff, it had the look of a mage. Which meant, undead, an arcane horror, something almost as dangerous as the revenant.

“Got it,” Vashti gritted, so that Finn would not waste his energies on one of his glyphs to neutralize it. A mage, alive or undead, was as easy to hit in battle as an armored warrior was difficult. The thing drifted to a halt, gesturing and conjuring a major spell which would surely be deadly. Vashti drew a careful bead on its throat -

Ariane screamed. The sound had death in it.

Without thought, she whirled to look. Reflexes tried to get the shot off anyway. The release was bad; her fingers caught the bowstring as it went, and she knew as she turned that the arrow would be wide of its mark.

In the space of a heartbeat, she saw:

-- Ariane, her blades on the ground, both gauntlets gripping the blade of the red crystal sword driven into her belly.

-- Ariane’s vallaslin, suddenly so dark against skin that had gone ashen.

-- Fenris, behind the revenant, swinging his greatsword down in a killing arc.

Then a great invisible hand lifted her, tightening in a crushing fist that bent her body back and away from that terrible scene. Her blood pounded in her ears as her throat was squeezed, and as the ceiling faded to utter darkness, she heard Morrigan’s voice: Love is weakness. Love is death.

---------

She said she’d got it but she didn’t get it and Maker’s breath the revenant was going down sword dropping no no no don’t let it pull out - !

Ariane fell bonelessly to the floor, blood oozing from between her fingers where she clutched at her gut. Finn could heal that. Vashti twitched and choked in midair, strangling in the grip of the crushing prison. He could use a glyph to neutralize that.

He couldn’t do both.

Things just beyond sight scuttled and scampered behind the thinning Veil, reaching for the dying elves, waiting for the vessels to be empty of essence so they could cross over and inhabit the bodies. He had never sensed their presence so clearly before, and it only made the horrible choice harder. He lost precious seconds until Fenris snarled, ”Heal, mage!” at him, before launching himself down the corridor at the arcane horror.

Yes. Heal. The glyph was elaborate, might take too long anyway. Feeling strangely numb, he worked a fast healing spell to stabilize Ariane. Elsewhere, electricity crackled, and someone distant shouted, “No, you leave them alone!”

Wonderful. The maleficar coming to save her undead minions? Get Ariane up, she’s the allan’isa, get her up, get her up... He rushed to the elven warrior’s side, risking reaching across the Veil to the spirits. They were there, behind the crowd of demons eager to enter the mortal world. Three or four voices scratched the inside of his mind, shrieking reckless, tactless offers of power, safety, power. Finn ignored them, more out of habit than from any special virtue, and clasped a willing spirit to him. He poured his strongest healing into Ariane as spells boomed and fwooshed down the hall. Releasing the spirit, he found himself utterly spent. That was it, no more mana for Finn.

Ariane, shaking and panting, reached for her blades, fumbled them; healing magic might have knitted her wounds, but the shock lingered. He couldn’t help that, not now. He pulled a bottle of lyrium loose, worried at the stopper and tried to see how the battle went.

His saw Fenris first, halfway down the hall and evidently paralyzed. His eyes went wide as he glanced farther ahead, expecting to see the arcane horror sending magical death toward them - but the arcane horror was no longer a threat. The charred remains were wreathed in thorny, living vines that still tugged and pulled at the blackened limbs. At the center of those vines stood a be-vallaslin’ed mage - Merrill, it had to be. Her staff was lifted as she finished an incantation, and Finn flinched -

- Vashti fell to the floor, coughing and gasping. A dispell, Finn realized. But... why?

Merrill’s ironwood staff dropped to the floor, landing amidst the vines. She looked past him, back down the hall; perhaps foolishly, he looked over his shoulder. Nothing. The red lyrium sword festered like a gangrenous wound in the Veil, but it lay between them; that wasn’t what drew her attention, either. “I’d like to tell you how to stop Hawke, if that’s all right,” she said quietly, still not looking at any of them.

If this was a trap, it was a really peculiar one. “We think we know how to stop Hawke, thank you,” Finn answered, as Ariane and Vashti tried to pick themselves up off the floor.

“Oh.” The Dalish mage swallowed, glanced at the Warden and then quickly away, and added, “I also know where she is.”

“Lies.” Fenris, moving again, free of the spell.

“Wait!” Finn cried. “She helped us! She might really know --” But Fenris was not waiting. Finn called up the patterns of a paralysis glyph, shaped them in his mind, and threw them out -

No mana. No glyph.

Merrill flinched but did not run as the greatsword came swinging around. Finn perceived motion to his left just before the grating shriek of metal-on-metal resounded along the stone corridor. Vashti stood, braced into the block, her two curved daggers crossed where she caught the Tevinter elf’s sword. “Oh,” Finn breathed again, smiling. “Good.”

”My kill,” the Warden snarled. Fenris stared down at her for a moment, then stepped back, shouldering his weapon.

“Wait, wait, wait, no!” Finn reached out with both arms, shaking his hands. “She said she knows where Hawke is.”

Vashti turned toward her erstwhile clan-sister, blades glinting in the shadows. “I don’t care.”

“You should.”

Finn blinked in surprise. Ariane’s voice was hard and clipped, and it stopped the Warden cold. “How can you say that?” Vashti demanded, anger and hurt in her voice. “You saw what she did!”

“Did you miss the part where we nearly died here?” Ariane shot back. “Do you really think it’s a good idea to go blindly wandering around down here, maybe encountering more of these things, and maybe not being so lucky next time?”

“I...” Finn wasn’t sure he’d ever seen Vashti uncertain before. She looked from Ariane back to Merrill, who stood trembling with her head bowed. This would be a good time, he thought, to knock back that lyrium potion, before anything else went wrong. He carefully slid the empty flask to the side of the hall, out of the way.

Fenris made a slicing gesture with his hand. “She cannot be trusted.”

At that, Merrill looked up. “I did just save you, you know. And I’ll just point out that I’m the mage not possessed by a spirit.”

“Yet you serve this abomination.”

Merrill twisted her fingers. “I thought I could... keep her from doing worse things. I can’t. It’s a very powerful, very evil spirit that has Hawke. They have to be stopped, and I can help. If we’re still alive afterward...” She took a breath and turned to Vashti, very somber. “I won’t try to stop you. From...” She waved vaguely at her dar’missu.

“Guard Captain Aveline and Master Tethras agreed that she was... not a stereotypical maleficar,” Finn put in. “It seems wise to accept whatever help we can get.”

Vashti rounded on him. “She destroyed our clan!”

“It was an accident!” Merrill cried out. “Mahariel, I swear - Marethari was possessed and we had... we had to kill her, but the clan thought I just murdered her and they, they wouldn’t stop, they were trying to kill me and I just -”

Vashti whirled, one arm raised. The pommel of her dagger took Merrill in the temple, and the mage collapsed to the ground. ”Then you should have died!”

He brought Vera down, flat, parallel to the ground, between the two exiled Sabrae. He was shaking, partly from anger, partly from fear, and just a little bit from the intoxicating rush of power the lyrium imparted. “You stop that.”

Vashti regarded him with slitted eyes. “You -”

“No, you!” Finn interrupted, suddenly not in the mood for dramatic accusations. “I understand entirely too well about coming home and finding out your trusted elder turned to blood magic and killed everyone, all right?” His voice sounded frayed and frantic, even to his own ears. Voices at the edge of perception whispered that he could put her in her place, teach her not to strike an unarmed, unresisting mage, just reach inside and make her drop those weapons... He shook his head to clear it. “Just... just stop that.”

Ariane stepped past him to put a hand on Vashti’s shoulder. “You will have justice. Count on it. But after this evil is defeated.”

The Warden didn’t move for a long, tense moment, then nodded sharply at Ariane. “As you say, it will be.” Without another word, she strode off to the lesser undead, to make sure of them with her blades and then reclaim her arrows. Fenris grunted and went to help.

“Thank you,” Merrill said from the floor.

“No, thank you.” Finn offered her a hand up. “Vashti would be a walking corpse if you hadn’t intervened.”

“I couldn't let them... It was an accident -”

“Not talking about that right now,” Ariane interrupted briskly. “Talking about stopping the abomination. How were you going to suggest that we go about doing it?”

“Well, there was this seal we found, in three parts...”

Modifié par Corker, 24 juillet 2012 - 12:00 .

[Corker]

They had paused in the dirty tunnel so that Finn could show Merrill the binding spell they planned to use against Hawke. Two mages who knew the ritual gave them a better chance of seeing it completed. Merrill drew a finger over the runes and sigils on the scroll where Finn had written out his spell. “Yes, that’s... that’s what I was going to propose. Almost to the letter.” She frowned and looked up at him. “Where were you going to get enough power for this?” Her eyes rounded. “Do you have that much mana?”

Finn chuckled and shook his head. “No. I’ve got this.” He lifted the large flask of lyrium from his hip, then re-settled it. Then it was his turn to frown. “How were you?”

“Blood,” Merrill said simply, and Finn’s breath caught. Right. Blood mage. She scowled at his reaction, and added, “Mine.”

“Oh! Oh, um, of course.” Yes, because that made it so much better! ...well, all right, it was better than hearing she had a few convenient sacrifices lined up, he supposed.

“So there’s just the bit where we have to get the talisman from Hawke,” Merrill said, her lips pressed to a thin line. “That will be a tricky bit. A deadly bit, very possibly.”

“That’s where I’m hoping Vashti’s... condition will help us,” Finn replied, straightening up from his awkward crouch. “Demons have some difficulty with darkspawn taint, so she may be able -” Finn clapped a hand over his mouth, too late. The Warden’s taint was supposed to be a secret, after all. He was too blasted tired to think straight, apparently.

“The Wardens didn’t cure her?” Merrill glanced ahead, to where the other three elves stood with varying levels of glower. “Duncan said that they would! That the only cure was for her to go with him.”

“It’s... complicated,” Finn sighed. More so because of the alchemical concoction Vashti had consumed, thinking it was a cure for the taint. Instead, it had concentrated the corruption’s effects, rendering her blood an effective poison. Especially against demons, he hoped. It might even help shield her presence, if she was willing to take certain measures.

Maker’s breath, but there was a lot of blood being used for an ostensibly blood magic-free ritual. It’s sort of a grey area...

“That’ what people say when they’d rather not explain things to me,” Merrill noted primly.

Finn shouldn’t have felt affronted, but he did. He was a champion explainer! He could explain things all day! “It’s her business. You should ask her,” he huffed.

But Merrill only considered her old clan-sister. “I don’t think she’d tell me.”

“Probably not,” Finn agreed after a moment, and held out a hand to help Merrill up. “Ready to run headlong to our doom?”

She looked at his hand a moment before taking it. “Are you an apostate, too?” she asked, pulling herself up.

“What, me?” Finn laughed at the sheer absurdity of the notion, earning him two narrow-eyed squints from Vashti and Fenris. “No, no, no. I’m from the Circle of Magi in Ferelden. Kinloch Hold.”

“You’ve been very nice. I wasn’t expecting that from a Circle mage.”

Finn’s mirth evaporated, and he looked down at the toes of his fox fur-lined boots. They needed cleaning very badly. “That’s... also complicated.”

“I see,” Merrill said quietly.

“No,” Finn shook his head. “I don’t mean that as a polite way of saying, ‘Yes, it does.’ I mean, it does, but not the same way...” He broke off, rubbing his brow.

He had known a lot of blood mages. Hadn’t realized it at the time, of course. And in the end, they destroyed his home and killed too many of the people he’d been raised with. But... some had been friends, colleagues. People he’d known, respected, even admired. And if most of the damage had been caused by the pride abomination... He’d tried to understand, to challenge his Chantry-bred assumptions just enough to conceive of how so many could have taken that dark path. Perhaps it could be used with noble intentions? A mage could imbibe lyrium sometimes, after all, and not become dependent on it. Why should it be inevitable that drawing power from blood would lead to murder and domination?

...but he still had nightmares, sometimes, of being trapped in his own body while someone else pulled its strings - his very own, very personal experience with blood magic at the hands of the dragon cultist Tozatha*. It was a profound, intensely intimate violation, and that had to stack against rationalizations that blood was just another form of power and morally neutral. You couldn’t do that with mana, and it was so wrong.

Which was probably what normal people thought about magic. Was it the power, or just not having it? Because the power was there for the taking, if he really wanted to ensure that -

“Stop it,” Finn muttered, pressing the heel of his hand to his eye. He couldn’t even be sure whose tempting little thoughts those were - his own, or something else’s.

“Stop what?” Merrill asked, crossing her arms. “Being a blood mage? It doesn’t turn off like a spigot, you know.”

“No, not you. Them,” Finn waved his hand irritably in the air to indicate the demons calling from beyond the tattered Veil. “How do you stand living here? The Veil’s so thin, it’d drive me mad. And I don’t think I mean that hyperbolically.”

“Oh.” Merrill shrugged. “It sort of fades to a background sound after a while, you know? And they don’t talk to me so much. They’re not terribly creative, and I already know blood magic. Ends the conversation rather quickly.”

“Maker’s breath,” Finn muttered. No wonder the Gallows had practically become an asylum. The longer a mage held out, the more the paranoid whispering of the demons would claw at her mind, trying to convince her she needed their power to survive. Other thoughts invading your own until you could hardly tell one from the other, sanity totally eroded by the time you took the deal. Except for those who accepted early, naturally, but they’d be the sort who wanted the power, and Finn suspected not for good reasons.

Well, for the most part. Even Fenris had admitted that, as wrong-headed, blind and foolish as he thought Merrill was, she hadn’t made the deal with the sort of muahaha power-madness he associated with maleficar. Prideful certainty that her way was the only way, yes... but that was a sin Finn had a passing acquaintance with himself.

Well then, didn’t it follow that he ought to learn blood magic himself, and quickly? That would be the best chance of preserving his- Finn pressed his hands to his temples, eyes closing tight. I don’t plan to be here that much longer, one way or another, so kindly take your offers and go bother someone else with them, please.

“Finn?” Ten paces away, Ariane regarded him with concern. “Are you all right?”

“What have you done to him?” Fenris growled, eyes narrowed at Merrill.

Finn extended a hand, palm out. “Nothing,” he cut off the Tevinter. “It’s this place. I can’t believe anyone thought it was a good idea to put a Circle here. Come on; we should go.”

Ariane didn’t look convinced, although Vashti instantly pushed herself off the wall she’d been leaning against. “Doing this right is more important that doing it fast,” Ariane said. “If you need to rest, we can -”

“I said we should go!” It came out hotter and sharper than he really meant it to, sending Ariane back a pace. Vashti was the one with random bursts of temper, not Finn. But he felt so stretched and thin; for the first time in his magical life, much of it spent in close contact with spirits as a Circle-trained master healer, he was afraid his own spirit would respond yes to the wrong urge. “I don’t need to - well, yes, I do need to rest, but I won’t get any here, so if we could just go and do this, that would be good.”

Ariane’s brow creased, and she opened her mouth to say something; the look on his face must’ve made her think the better of it. She sighed and nodded. “Then let’s go.”

Fenris eyed him with open contempt as they readied themselves. Finn pointedly ignored him, checking the large flask of lyrium at his hip and the two pieces of sigil around his neck. “Weakness,” the elf muttered.

Finn’s teeth ground, but he’d told Vashti he could work with Fenris. He could keep a civil tongue in his head if it helped them win against this -

“You backing out?” he heard Vashti ask. He looked up; she was staring the Tevinter down from her scout’s spot at the head of their party.

“What?” Fenris asked, surprised. “No. I am with you.”

“Hm.” Vashti shrugged a shoulder. “Said something about ‘weakness,’ thought you had second thoughts.”

Fenris grimaced, baring teeth. “Your mage -”

“Is strong. Finn will not fail us.” Vashti said it firmly, with conviction, and turned back around to lead them through the tunnels without a further word.

Finn stood a little straighter. He didn’t always, or even often, see eye to eye with the dark Dalish Warden. But he respected her, and it was gratifying to hear that it was returned.

He was strong. Together, they’d do this.

-------------------

What's that, faithful reader? Want to know more about Finn's brush with blood magic? Find that, plus arrogant Orlesians, dragon cultists, and ancient elvhen artifacts in "The Search for the Dragon's Claw!"

We now return you to your regularly scheduled program.

-------------------

Vashti flitted down the darkened hallway, leaving a trail of bloody footprints in the shadows behind her. The taint, concentrated and focused by a philter she’d been stupid enough to drink, hoping for a cure, supposedly served to shield her from whatever beyond-human senses the abomination might have. It was not, unfortunately, something she’d tested often, and never against a foe this powerful.

She would have a thirty count for a head start. Bow in hand, she slipped into the chamber where the clan’s murderer said the demon would be. There must have been a major seam of some mineral here. The Darktown tunnel opened into a large vaulted chamber, roof supported by columns of the original stone left in place. Weird mage-lights threw dim, cold light, giving her many shadows to navigate, closer to the chamber’s center and -

Eluvian. Xebenkeck in Hawke’s body should have been the first thing she noticed, but the shining surface of the restored eluvian, showing twisted, roiling glimpses of some other world, demanded acknowledgement. It had been hard to see the one at Drake’s Fall, identical to the one Tamlen had discovered. But this... this was it, pieces of the original accursed item that had condemned them both to corruption and death. One just more slowly than the other.

And Merrill had spent seven years trying to save it?

Her true target was there, of course. The abomination, red-violet light shining from her eyes and beneath her skin, spun her staff to point at three dead bodies laid before the eluvian. The mirror’s surface rippled, gently at first, and then with larger waves - once, twice, thrice, and three walking corpses stood and awaited orders from their mistress. Xebenkeck turned to survey her handiwork, and Vashti spotted the links of the chain around her neck that held the piece of the seal. Her breathing slowed and she silently drew an arrow from her quiver. She set it to the bowstring and let the world narrow down to the curve of gold.

All the shadows in the room wobbled as a new source of light zig-zagged in through the door. Xebenkeck turned, staff leveling at the wisp Finn had sent in ahead of their group. It was a poor distraction for them, as it only drew the demon’s attention to the door they would have to enter, but it gave her a chance to lift her bow and draw.
She heard their footfalls, the familiar jangle of Ariane’s war harness, but it was all distant, miles away. The thin golden line at the demon’s throat shone like the sun, bright in the darkness - inhale, exhale, hold and release -

The arrow departed with a quiet zip! and she was reaching for another one when the demon said, “Good work, Merrill.”

Treachery! Vashti swung away from the demon, lost precious moments when Fenris, glowing blue-white, got in her line of sight.

“Amulet! Get the amulet!” Finn shouted desperately.

“Are you stupid?” Merrill cried out, apparently at Fenris. “It’s a trick!”

Vashti’s eyes widened. Dread Wolf take her, it was a trick. A real traitor would have shouted an alarm before she got her shot off.

She swung back in time to see the abomination stooping toward the floor. She shot again, a poorly-aimed glancing blow that sent the metallic amulet skittering away from all of them toward the back of the cavern and the eluvian. Ariane called down the wrath of Elgar’nan again, and Xebenkeck screamed.

Finn would make a dash for the amulet. The rest of them were to rain retribution down on the abomination. Despite Xebenkeck’s deception, the team seemed to have recovered. Fenris charged, sword lifted high; Ariane circled in the other direction.

Vashti turned away, toward the walking corpses lurching to their mistress’s defense. They had not planned for this, and neither warrior could afford to take a sword from behind. She got off two arrows and attracted the attention of the undead before a tiny glowing red streak angled in and down, between the corpses. Vashti threw herself back and down, behind one of the thick stone columns, before the fireball exploded with a roar that echoed in the cavernous hall.

She rolled back out, bow parallel to the ground - and froze, joints locking and muscles straining as blood magic climbed in under her skin and burned her tainted blood. Through a red haze of pain that recalled her Joining, she saw to her horror that the others were similarly entrapped. Xebenkeck, half-crouched, one arm wrapped tightly around a bloody gash in Hawke’s belly, tried to straighten and sagged back against a column instead. “Not bad,” she gasped. “Almost impressive, actually. You would make strong hosts, generals for my army. I taught my herald, Tarohne, how to open the mind of any mortal to my spirits - do not think that I am less capable than she.”

Xebenkeck raised one bloody hand and shouted, the hoarse cry of a blood mage digging deeply into her own vitality, and the burning in Vashti’s veins reached a terrible crescendo before she mercifully lost consciousness.

[Corker]

First Enchanter Irving pored over his book; even the Knight-Commander seemed to be sneaking a curious peek every few moments. “This is truly astounding work, Florian... I do apologize, it’s Finn, isn’t it?”

Finn tried not to preen, either from the praise or for Irving getting his name right. “Ah, yes, First Enchanter. Thank you for remembering.”

“Absolutely remarkable. A complete grammar for the elvhen tongue and a lengthy dictionary of recovered words besides. An enduring work of scholarship, indeed.”

Finn breathed deeply, settling his shoulders back. “Thank you, First Enchanter.” He made it as nonchalant as he could. No big deal, just a spectacular, impossible, ground-breaking resurrection of a previously dead language. Yes, yes, all in a day’s work for Finn Aldebrant. “With the Circle’s permission, I’d like to take it to the Dalish nation at Ostagar. I couldn’t have written it without their help.”

Irving smiled his kindly old man smile. “I’m sure that can be arranged. Don’t you think so, Knight-Commander?”

“The matter must be given proper consideration,” Greagoir said, stiff as ever, “but under the circumstance, approval does seem likely.”

“Excellent.” Irving closed the volume and passed it carefully back to Finn, who took it and cradled it in his arms as if it were his own child. “I’m sure our other scholars will want to see that as well. Do let them read a bit of it before you go.”

“Of course, First Enchanter,” Finn said with a polite bow. He left Irving’s office with a spring in his step and finally let a stupid grin crawl over all over his face. An elvhen grammar! And an expanded dictionary! The world’s most thoroughly lost language - no, not lost, eradicated - reconstructed, uncovered, unburied and made to live again! It was the absolute pinnacle, the singular achievement of his lifetime. He couldn’t wait to see the look on Vashti’s face when he’d walk up to her and say... And say... Wait, what would he s--

“Finn!” The young dwarven scholar Dagna bounded up to him, looking nearly as excited as he felt. “Can I see it? Can I see your book? I’ve been thinking about studying the links between the magic of ancient Tevinter and Arlathan, except nobody knows much about Arlathan, but -”

“But their concept of magic and its use is reflected in their words for it!” Finn finished, catching her enthusiasm. This work really had the power to revolutionize scholarship in so many areas!

“Right!” Dagna reached up for the book. “I’d just love to read it.”

There were plenty of reading desks in the library. (He did walk the intervening halls from Irving’s office to the library, didn’t he? Must have been so giddy over finishing the book that he hadn’t noticed...) With a slight, strange hesitation, he let her take the tome and settle down into a chair. “Gosh,” she sighed, just a few pages in, “this is wonderful!”

“Oh? Which part?” He craned his neck to try and see the text. Mostly because he wasn’t above wanting to know which bit of prose was so excellent, but partly because... because... something wasn’t quite...

He was interrupted by screams. A gout of flame jetted from beyond one of the bookshelves, lighting a rug on fire. A bookcase toppled, revealing ranks of demons and abominations, all with fire at their fingertips. Mages ran from the room and books burned.

Finn stood frozen in confusion and terror. This can’t be happening. This can’t be happening again.

“There’s too many,” Dagna whispered beside him. To his right, the thick oaken door that led upstairs slammed shut. She looked up with wide, pleading eyes as the demons began to circle around them. “Finn, they’ll kill us and burn your book.”

His book! All that knowledge would be lost again! A shelf of irreplaceable histories went up in a gout of flame, underscoring the threat. He threw down a repulsion ward to keep the monsters at bay. Maybe, somehow, that would buy enough time to do something...

“We. Need. Help,” Dagna said firmly, pointing to a single word of his text.

Xebenkeck.

“What’s that doing there?” he wondered.

“It says she’s an ancient goddess mages can call upon in their time of need and this is pretty needy!” Dagna said. An abomination lurched and she shrieked, ducking under the table. “Hurry!”

“But...” Finn frowned. “But...” A fire demon slithered forward, its fiery aura making his beautiful clean robe discolor and smoke. “But that can’t be right!”

“What are you talking about! Hurry!”

“The phonology’s all wrong! There is no way that is the name of an elven god! It’s full of stops, hard consonants. Elven doesn’t sound like that, it’s all fricatives and sibilants, and I can’t think of a way to tell Vashti off in a language I supposedly wrote the book on, and and this isn’t real.”

And with that sudden certainty, the stone walls of Kinloch Hold faded, replaced by the familiar surreality of the Fade. Where Dagna had been, a barely-clad desire demon reared up; beyond her, the ranks of demons were somewhat thinned but hardly gone.

Fine by him.

Free of the illusion of the corporeal world, he had access to all the mana he could handle, here in the Fade. Power would no longer be a problem, nor the need of flesh to recover after channeling energy. He could work magic at the speed of thought, and he was more than motivated to think fast. The past few days had been full of demons chattering in his semi-conscious mind, teasing and tempting, prompting and pushing, and he’d had no way to make them stop. Swinging Vera free, he gave a grin that was maybe just a bit feral. “I am finally going to have some peace and quiet!”

First, a great flying chunk of rock bought him some space, and a bit of time as it recovered its balance, away from the desire demon. Not that space would prevent it from casting its own spells - but he needed room to work.

Finn generally disliked combining paralysis and repulsion glyphs, on aesthetic grounds if nothing else. Uncontrolled runaway magical reactions were not to be trifled with. He was willing to make an exception in this case, though. Paralysis first, towards the left-center of the throng, then repulsion directly atop it - quickly, before one of the demons surging forward could trigger the first one. Magical energy fields overlapped, resonated, feeding off of each other until - !

The edge of the explosion rippled out, a band of white light expanding to encompass somewhat more than half the demons, leaving them all frozen from the paralytic explosion - including, thank the Maker, the most dangerous desire demon. Searing pain rolled over him from the right - a fiery attack from one of the rage demons - and he answered with a straight repulsion glyph and a healing spell.

Glyph, glyph, glyph. A barrier of wards designed to keep him out of claws’ reach while he fired bolts of arcane energy at the monsters, starting with the frozen desire demon - it wouldn’t stay stuck forever, and it would be a formidable foe. Anything that breached his wards caught another fist of stone, sending it sprawling back again.

The wards did not protect him from their blasts of fire. He wasn’t much of a Primal mage, but he did have a knack with stone - and the most basic spell that turned his skin into flinty armor certainly helped dull the hot, burning fire. He was much of a healer, and with little danger of running out of mana, it was just a matter of time.

The desire demon finally shook the paralysis, and he sent another stone fist flying its way. The demon vanished from sight, and Finn smiled. Maybe this wouldn’t be so hard after all.

-----------

He wasn’t sure where he was or how he’d gotten there. Finn remembered defeating the demons in a dream of the Tower, and then... it all got a bit fuzzy, and now he was here. It was very... green. Really, really green, with trees that seemed to be made entirely out of giant leaves. Really, really giant leaves, leaves as long as he was tall, and veined in bright red and gold. The sunlight that made it past the giant leaves was, even in the Fade, somehow brighter, stronger and more real than it was in Ferelden, and he had the impression that it should be hot and sticky.

There was a path, cut through the enormous plants. Without any better idea, Finn began to follow it. It didn’t go very far - he’d hardly walked a score of steps, around a sharp bend, before it opened into a shaded campsite huddled under the boughs of massive trees, these with the more usual trunks, but canopies that only opened twoscore feet above them. A trio of shockingly violet birds flew across the small clearing under the trees, disturbed by his approach -

- but not as disturbed as the camp’s residents, a trio of humans even darker than Vashti, and the lyrium-lined form of Fenris. They were dressed briefly, as befitted the heat and humidity, but for battle. No bright colors, no showy plumes - just simple, dark harness holding a bare minimum of tough leather plates over the most vulnerable spots. They rose from where they sat or crouched, reaching for weapons. “There you are!” Finn called to Fenris. “Come on, it’s time to go. This is all just a--”

“A magister!” cried one of the humans (or, well, a demon in human form, he assumed).

“He’s come to take you back to Danarius!” said another, clutching at Fenris’s shoulder.

“No, no,” Finn said with a shake of his head, “this is just a dream, and -” Fenris charged him with a roar. “You made me do this,” he said, and threw down another repulsion glyph.

The glyph bloomed under the elf’s feet - and Finn watched with wide eyes as the energy crackled through the lyrium brands. Like lightning through metal, the spell directed itself into the lyrium instead of at Fenris’s body, and the repulsion effect failed to take hold.

Doesn’t matter, Finn thought in the spare second left to him as the elf closed the distance between them. This is the Fade. Will is strength. He might be a strongman on Thedas, but here, it’s the mage who -

There was a sickening cracking sound as his vision when briefly white, then a spinning kaleidoscope of green leaves and white lyrium and violet birds, and Finn found himself flat on his back seeing double. And what he saw was Fenris, teeth bared, and lyrium brands glowing with power.

Oh, of course, Finn thought groggily. He should probably be alarmed, but his mind simply wasn’t having it at the moment. When he’s on Thedas, he can step half into the Fade. So when he’s in the Fade, it only stands to reason that he’s also half in the waking world - and just as strong here as he is there. ...Maybe this won’t be so easy after all.

“Die, mage,” Fenris snarled, and Finn wondered if he just might.

[Corker]

“Don’t kill me!” Finn bleated. “I’ll... I’ll talk!” He wasn’t sure about what, but if he was talking, he was living.

Fenris paused, brow furrowing, but the three demons drifted up behind him. “He’ll lie to save his own skin,” one hissed. “He’s obviously a scout for your master. Kill him!”

“Kill him quickly,” another one put in. “Danarius will be close on his heels, and you must prepare.”

Fenris half-twisted to look behind him. “I will face him on my own.”

“You know you can’t.” The third, a woman, put a gentle hand on his shoulder. “You know what will happen,” she said, softly, sadly.

“No.” Fenris brushed her off and reached down to drag Finn to his feet, then pinned him one-armed against the strange scaly bark of one of the trees. “No, this time... this time I will be strong. I will!”

“Xebenkeck, right?” Finn guessed, heart hammering in his chest. “Some tribal spirit or something they want you to invoke?”

“Spy!” cried one of the warriors. “He knows our plans, kill him quickly!”

“It’s a demon,” Finn blurted out, licking his lips nervously. “This is the Fade, it’s a demon, it’s -”

“He’s babbling. Just end this so we can prepare! There isn’t much time!”

To Finn’s horror, Fenris nodded. He shut his eyes tightly as he saw the elf **** his fist back, and said in a rush words he prayed would jog a memory loose, give the lie to this Fade fantasy: “Danarius is dead, you were there, arrows in the chest and throat, Kirkwall docks, Hawke -”

”Hawke.” The low voice was a snarl.

Finn risked opening his eyes. Fenris’s were narrowed, looking at Finn but somehow turned inward. “Hawke! Yes! You want to kill Hawke! She gave you to Danarius, but he’s dead, and now she’s trying to give you to this demon!”

“Does it matter?” The demonic chorus changed its tune. “If not Danarius, someone else will come to claim you.”

“Using blood magic.”

“You’re weak. You’ll fall.”

Fenris jerked back as if on a string. “No.” He rounded on the demons, but his face held as much fear as rage. “No!”

“You know it’s true,” said the gentle one. “It’s not your fault. The mages did this to you, made you helpless before them... but we can make you strong.”

“Stronger than the mages.”

“Strong,” Finn said quietly, “is telling them ‘no.’”

Fenris rounded on him. “You know nothing of this!”

“I beg your pardon!” Somehow, Finn still managed to find a scrap of indignation to hold onto when his credentials were called into question. “They’re demons trying to convince you to abominate. As a mage, I do indeed know something about this.”

“But it’s true,” the elf rasped, running a hand through his pale hair. “He came for me here, and I went. In Kirkwall, I... went. I’m... I’m not strong enough.”

“You realize that it’ll give you power, but utterly destroy your will, don’t you?” Finn asked. “You won’t have to be strong because Xebenkeck will be strong for you. You’re not even in the picture at that point! Just a walking meat sock for some demon in your head!”

Fenris looked at him, looked at the demons. “But... they will come for me. I need to be able to -”

How was this not getting through? “Look, I’m not even using big words!” But... but maybe the wrong words? What would hit home for a former magister’s -- “You’ll just be a thrall to the demon! Do you understand that?” By the way Fenris’s head came up, he did. Restate, summarize, Maker please, end debate and win! “It’s just a different kind of slavery and you’ll be allowing it.”

Wide green eyes fixed on him for a moment, and fear faded into grim resolve. A brief nod, and then Fenris flung himself at the dark-skinned warriors. Finn assisted, aid becoming more necessary when shades dressed like Tevinter soldiers came crashing through the jungle. In the end, it was just the two of them, halfway across the clearing from each other and breathing hard.

Finn waited - for an apology, perhaps, or thanks - but Fenris only straightened, put up his sword and ---

--- where? how? ---

Ostagar. The ancient white stones reared up in familiar formations, and Finn was surprised to be hit with a pang of homesickness. No, no, ridiculous - the Circle was home. But this must be either Ariane or Vashti’s dream, he thought.

Ostagar - but not. Beyond the bones of the ancient fortress he knew jutted new towers, joined by slender, gracefully arching bridges and crowned with beaten gold. And the place was a-bustle, not with the few traders who came so far south to haggle for Dalish bows or furs, but with elves, scores of them in robes, in gowns, in armor, going about the business of a thriving, living city.

Finn swallowed. He didn’t know Fenris except as an overly dramatic source of spitting anger; seeing his fears had been impersonal, a puzzle to be solved at high speed to save his life. Destroying this dream... this would be harder.

It’s false, he reminded himself, scanning the crowd for a familiar face. She’ll thank you for it later. Unless it was Vashti, in which case she’d probably punch him and glower sullenly, but...

But it didn’t look like it was Vashti. The crowd parted for what had to be someone’s idea of a war-halla. Silvery white with wicked horns, as large as an elk, it danced lightly through the courtyard, guided without bit or bridle. Elves to either side called out gladly to the rider, offering congratulations and good wishes. Ariane, her usual armor lacquered with a layer of shining green enamel, waved back, beaming. Finn hesitated, then waved. “Ariane! Ariane!”

She looked up and saw him; the halla danced back. “Ariane, I need to talk with you,” he called, trying to make his way through the crowd.

“A shemlen?” “A shemlen!” “What’s he doing here?” “Call the guard, someone!”

“Finn,” Ariane raised her voice to reply, still at a distance, “you need to get back to the fortress gates.”

“There’s trouble, we need to --”

“Finn, I can’t.” He saw her drop one hand to her belly, and her gentle smile was an arrow to his gut. “I’m with child. I never thought...” Finn’s stomach rolled at the wrongness of this. It had never occurred to him to wonder if either of his elvhen traveling companions wanted children, much less felt the lack. To suddenly know this about Ariane, and knowing that it was a lie...

“I’ll sequester until her birth at least,” his friend went on, the halla still back-stepping. “You and Vashti will have to handle it without me this time, I’m afraid.”

That was why she was keeping her distance - trying to keep his quick blood away from the mythical unborn child, in the perpetual Dalish hope of achieving undying life. Maker... how did you argue with that? Ariane was a fiercely devoted protector, her life as an allan’isa tied to guarding the clan’s mages from demonic influence. Certainly, she’d protect what she thought was her own child no less? And no doubt any moment now, some menace would be along to threaten this idyllic new Arlathan, and help would be offered with the name Xebenkeck...

Allan’isa protect from demons, a demon’s trap in the Fade, Fade logic and templar senses... “There’s an abomination loose! Here in the courtyard!” Finn shouted desperately.

“What?” Ariane startled, staring at him, and the war-halla reared, trumpeting with alarm.

“An abomination! You have to stop it!”

Her two swords slid free of their scabbards. “Where?”

Everywhere. “I don’t know!”

“He’s mistaken.” Something that looked like Keeper Solan materialized by the stag’s flank. “Ariane, something terrible is coming, the Council needs you to come -”

She looked at her Keeper, one of the mages she was especially sworn to defend, and she looked at Finn. Emerald-armored elf-demons were finally shouldering through the crowd, making to drag the quick-blooded creature out to the gates. He glanced at them quickly, at a loss - if he attacked them ‘without reason,’ dream logic would just insist that he was the abomination. “Trust me!” he called as one enameled green gauntlet fastened on his shoulder. “Dirthamen’s Call, that’ll reveal it!”

She paused, confused, for one eternal second, before bringing her arms in and then reaching out, spirit commanding that the knots of magic be revealed and undone.

The courtyard, the fortress, even the distant towers - they rippled as if they were reflections on the surface of a still pond that had been disturbed by a pebble. Ariane jerked back. “What was... that’s not...”

“We’re in the Fade!” Finn shouted. It was the right answer at the right time, and the dream shattered in the face of Ariane’s disbelief.

...Which left Finn in the grip of four demons who no longer had to pretend to be law-abiding guardsmen dragging him to the gates.

Close-quarters combat was no place for a mage to be, even in the Fade. It didn’t matter how much power Finn could access if he couldn’t shape it, and with one wrist caught in viselike talons, half his repertoire was off the table. He threw out a bolt of pure energy, striking one demon, but the claws of three others raked him. Something growled, much too close to his neck for comfort; when he flinched away, turning his head, he saw distended jaws gnawing ineffectively on Vera, straining toward his throat. He screamed and gave it a bolt to the face but something else pierced his side and he briefly wondered if this would kill him or leave him Tranquil...

“I am the sword of my fathers!” He heard the war-cry a split-second before he saw the blades, tearing through one of the demons clutching him. Finn jerked, struggling to get away as Ariane attacked. He only succeeded in pitching himself backwards onto the floor; fortunately for him, three of the demons were focused on the more deadly, armed threat.

Unfortunately for him, that left one determined to finish its job. Fire blossomed, burning away the repulsion glyph he was trying to shape in his mind, pain washing over his face and arms. He let out a shuddering sob, because it hurt, and managed another energy bolt. It wasn’t the spell he wanted to cast, but the concentration for anything more elegant or useful was lost to him. It lifted a taloned arm back for a massive swing -

- and was abruptly without an arm. The thing actually stopped to gape in surprise, and Finn saw the tip of Ariane’s father’s blade poke through its chest. The sword disappeared with a jerk, and the demon collapsed to one side. Ariane stood behind it, face streaked with tears, teeth bared in a vicious grimace.

Finn grabbed some threads of will and managed to weave a healing spell for them both as his friend dropped to her knees, swords clattering to the ground. She lowered her face into her hands and Finn said, “I’m so sorry,” but he was already being pulled away...

[Corker]

...A forest again. Not the alien jungle of Fenris’s dream, but a nice normal forest, with ash trees above and brown leaf litter underfoot. A stream trickled merrily nearby, and the late afternoon sun was golden and thick.

A loud cry ahead startled him into motion. He had, so far, interrupted the others’ dreams before Xebenkeck’s minions brought in the crisis that was meant to tempt them to turn to her for aid. Had his lucky streak run out? He readied a repulsion glyph and forced more length into his strides, bursting onto the scene to find...

That, ah. That wasn’t a cry of pain.

He made out the tangle of limbs, light and dark, and the two familiar faces, and reflexively looked away. Just because there was no privacy in the Circle didn’t mean that it wasn’t rude to stare. Almost as quickly, he looked back - not from lascivious interest (no, really!) but because the thing that looked like Ariane was a demon, and it wasn’t terribly bright not to keep his eyes on it, reflexes or no.

A water-rounded stone whizzed past his ear. “Leave,” Vashti seethed, crouched on the ground with one hand splayed protectively (or possessively?) on ‘Ariane’s’ prone, bare shoulder.

“I, um.” He coughed into his fist. “I didn’t realize. I’m... very sorry, Vashti.” Sorry on more levels than he could readily count. How long had this torch been burning? Did Ariane even know? He certainly hadn’t guessed, but he never had been able to keep track of who was chasing after whom in the Tower.

“Just go,” the Warden gritted, turning away from him.

“I can’t,” Finn said miserably.

”GO!” Vashti was on her feet, three quick paces putting her right into his personal space, teeth bared, fists clenched, corded muscles bunched and ready to strike. For some reason, what he noticed was that her hair was loose, falling softly to her chin instead of pulled tightly back. It just wasn’t right...

“You really should go,” ‘Ariane’ said from where she reclined on the ground. “You won’t win this one.”

Finn’s eyes widened in horror, then narrowed with verb conjugations. “I won’t, will not, as in, it hasn’t happened yet. She hasn’t agreed to -”

Vashti hit him. In the waking world, the punch would have floored him. Here, he staggered back two steps, rubbing his jaw. “We’re in the Fade!” he said, raising his voice in anger. This wasn’t the first time the Warden had struck him, and the habit was not endearing. “Hasn’t this happened to you before? It’s a trap.”

Vashti looked around, looked behind her at the demon, who shrugged. The scene rippled with disbelief...

“No.” Vashti shook her head back and forth, stepping back. Eyes squeezed shut, she gripped her head in her hands and chanted, “No, no, no, no...” Finn wet his lips, unsure if this was progress or failure. The demon looked altogether too serene for his liking. Then Vashti balled her hands into fists, threw her head back and screamed at the sky: ”NO!” Her eyes flew open and she leapt for him, fingers curved into claws; Finn got the repulsion glyph up just in the nick of time. The Warden bounced inelegantly back.

“It’s not real!” he shouted at her.

“I do not care!” she screamed back, and to his surprise he saw tears in her eyes. “Leave us and go!”

“Vashti, you’ll -”

“What, die? Better now, here, happy, than under the earth torn apart by darkspawn,” she hissed. The air shimmered and twisted, and her good Dalish longbow was in her hands, an arrow on the string. Finn risked a glance at the demon, who was smirking. “I should have been dead long ago.”

Missile shield spells were wonderful for avoiding fire in large combat situations; not so wonderful for avoiding a marksman who could put an arrow in his eye at a hundred yards. “Vashti. Vashti, don’t shoot,” he said, holding up his hands.

“Then go.”

“I don’t think I can!” Finn protested, a little frantically. He had no idea how he moved from one dream to another. He couldn’t will it if he wanted to.

“Just shoot him,” the demon advised. “He’ll wake up in his mortal body.”

But I might wake up Tranquil! Finn opened his mouth to protest - too slow. He had only sputtered, “But!” when Vashti gave a curt nod and loosed the arrow. Finn flinched -

- the arrow splintered, shattering against a marble statue that simply hadn’t been there a second before. No, not a statue - it was burning with magical power. A spirit in the form of a statue. Standing behind it - her? - Finn still identified ancient Tevinter drapery, a lamp held aloft in the left hand, and an oval-shaped hoop on a short handle in the other.

A mirror, he realized abruptly, as the statue stepped forward toward the Warden and the demon scrambled to its feet. The Light of Knowledge, that lamp, that was the giveaway. A mirror with no glass that shows what is rather than what we wish to see. Those were the attributes of Truth as the old poets had personified her.

Or, in the tongue of the magisters: Vera.

The light of the lamp fell on ‘Ariane’ and burned away the assumed form, revealing the shape of a desire demon. “This is what you want so badly?” Vera asked. “This is what she is.”

“Trespasser!” the demon hissed. Finn leaned out from behind the cover Vera provided and launched a flying chunk of rock at it. Hit, the thing screeched; Vashti sobbed, bow dropping from her fingers. Vera knelt as the elf sank to the ground, murmuring quietly to her. If Vera could talk sense into her, Finn could handle the demon. A neutralization glyph and a flurry of arcane bolts banished it nicely.

Taking a deep breath, he looked down to see Vashti staring dead-eyed into Vera’s mirror. “...in the waking world,” the spirit said.

“If I remain here,” the Warden said dully, “and she wakes, my body will be used against her.”

“That is the most likely outcome,” the spirit agreed.

Vashti closed her eyes again, tears spilling down her cheeks. Finn turned away from the sight, feeling very much the intruder. “I love her.”

“And she loves you, although not exactly in the way you wish. The demon wishes only to use you.”

“I hate you.”

“No, you don’t.” There was a sound like the grinding of a pestle in a mortar, footfalls, and then a hard, cool hand on his shoulder. “I cannot stay,” Vera told him. “The Forbidden One will destroy me if I linger too long in her domain.”

Finn nodded, torn between turning to see her face and not. “Thank you,” he managed. “For your help.”

“Your thoughts are on me daily, and even your staff honors my name. There are few enough so devoted to vera,” she said, and he thought he could hear a smile in the voice. “But this is the limit of my aid.”

“I’m very glad to have met you,” he said, finally turning over his shoulder. He got the briefest glimpse of a smooth marble face of perfect symmetry before...

…movement without motion...

...Explosions and screaming and fire! Finn flinched and ducked for cover behind something that was large and solid-looking. He seemed to have entered Merrill’s dream as whatever she treasured was being destroyed.

Another dream of a homeland? The city around him looked vaguely like Kirkwall, all pale stone, sharp angles and wide terraces. But the citizens dying horribly in the streets were elves, Dalish elves, perishing under withering attacks of arrows and fire.

Finn peeled himself carefully away from the stone wall to peer around it, then flattened himself back again as a gout of fire rushed past. How was he supposed to find Merrill in this mess, much less get her out of it? In the other nightmares, he’d appeared fairly near the elves. She ought to be somewhere nearby. He could put up a few protective auras and possibly not get cooked and/or pierced out there. Possibly. He should try to see what he could see from cover, first.

The billowing flame and smoke were making that difficult. Waves of enemies that seemed to include humans, qunari and various hideous abominations charged through the plaza. The remaining elvhen defenders fell, and a hideous war-whoop went up...

...and the nightmare faded, the blood and smoke and filth vanishing along with the horde of invaders. The courtyard was suddenly warm and pleasant, filled with bright sun and birdsong, and the Dalish were going about their business. Finn ducked out of hiding, resulting in some scandalized gasps from passerby.

“Finn? What are you doing here?” Merrill, draped in robes of white, sat on a high-backed seat up in a portico running along the front of the very building he’d been cowering against. The reconstructed eluvian stood behind her and to the left. “I haven’t seen any of the others since I got here. I thought I was the only one stuck.”

“You... know you’re in the Fade? The Beyond?” He amended himself to use the Dalish terminology.

“Of course.” She sounded a little strained, a little distant. “I’ve... I’ve been here before. Do come up here, would you? The killings will begin soon and you’re in the line of fire.”

Shaking his head in confusion, Finn hitched up the hem of his immaculately clean robe and trotted up the stairs. “Hasn’t Xebenkeck tempted you to, you know, accept her help?”

“Yes, naturally,” she nodded. “But I’ve fallen for that twice, now, although I’m not entirely certain Feynriel’s dream should count...” She sighed, resting her head on a hand. “It hardly matters. I shan’t do it again.”

“Wonderful!” Finn beamed and looked around. “Right, so, let’s go.”

Merrill frowned up at him. “Let’s go where?”

“Ehm... I’m not sure,” he admitted. “But when the others rejected the dreams, they ended. I think.”

“Oh.” She looked back out into the streets of the city. “I expect that’s because I thought I deserved to stay and see it all burn again and again and again.” Before Finn could even begin to marshal an argument for that, she stood. “But I promised, didn’t I? To help you, and then to let Vashti... Whatever lies for me Beyond will still be there, after.” Merrill raised a bloody hand, and the scene vanished.

They were alone on a foggy plane - not quite alone. The eluvian was there, and then, one by one, the others joined them, stepping out of the mists on their guards. Weapons lowered, slowly, as they recognized each other.

“Are you all real?” Ariane asked. “Is this real, or another trap?”

“I’m mostly sure it’s real,” Finn said. “Don’t agree to take any help from anything named ‘Xeben-you-know,’ just in case.”

There were a few answering grunts of acceptance, and then silence. “Now what.” Fenris finally spat the words as if they tasted foul.

Vashti minutely examined one of her arrows, face as composed and closed as usual. “During the Blight, had to kill the demon to get out of the dream.”

“We’d be vaporized,” Finn said flatly. “We could easily have been killed in the waking world by just the power she projected there, through Hawke. We’re only alive because she thought she could use us. Here, we don’t have a chance.”

“What about that?” Ariane pointed to the eluvian, its shimmering, shifting surface showing little and promising less.

Merrill tilted her head, confused. “You want to call for help?”

“Of course!” Finn’s eyes lit up. “She’s using that to pull the demons from her realm into the corpses in ours - that’s really the eluvian! We’re on the other side - we can use it to get home!” He turned to Merrill, who was shaking her head. “They’re not just communications devices. They’re portals.”

“Tamlen did go through the mirror,” Merrill said softly.

“He did,” Finn nodded. “And now it’s our turn.”

“Then let us go and leave this place.” Fenris strode up to the mirror but paused.

“Do you want me to go first?” Merrill asked. He startled and glared at her, then spat out a really rude bit of Tevine slang and disappeared into the rippling violet surface. She sighed and gave the frame a brief caress. “I should have realized,” she said, then stepped forward and vanished.

“Next?” Finn glanced toward Vashti and Ariane expectantly.

The Warden-Commander of the Dalish stared at the restored mirror as if it were a high dragon. Of course she had a history with the relics, but... oh, but this was it, these were pieces of the mirror, the same one they’d found shattered and used together with the Lights of Arlathan to find the Witch of the Wilds at Drake’s Fall.

Ariane sheathed one of her blades and held out a hand. “We’ll go together.”

Vashti looked at the hand, raised her eyes to Ariane’s face and gave the smallest smile of gratitude as she threaded her fingers with the other woman’s. Tangled together, light and dark. Finn turned sharply toward the eluvian, feeling again as if he was intruding on something private. They passed him, and first Ariane and then Vashti were swallowed up by the artifact.

He stepped forward himself, adjusting his collar nervously. Well. Going to go through an actual eluvian. Face down the deep Fade entity that had nearly killed them once today. Pray to the Maker that all the pieces of their plan were still together, and that Xebenkeck hadn’t destroyed the talisman in the meanwhile.

Even though it meant little in the Fade, he took a deep breath before passing through the portal.

[Corker]

brb pulled for edits

Modifié par Corker, 11 juin 2013 - 04:07 .

[Corker]

Finn tried, as best he could, to pay attention to what happened when he stepped through the eluvian.  They might never find another one; even if they found another, who knew if they would be able to operate it?  This could be his one chance to observe and personally experience one of the lost magics of Arlathan.

The violet surface rippled; against his skin, it felt more like cool, smooth glass than water.  Unconsciously, he held his breath as his nose hit it.  If glass could part like water, this did, and he passed forward into darkness -- which ended as soon as he opened his eyes, arms and legs flailing as he abruptly transitioned from ‘upright, walking’ to ‘on the ground, prone.’  And above him, straddling one of his legs with one dirty boot planted carelessly on the robe between his legs, was the abomination.  Red-violet light winked from underneath her half-closed eyelids, reflecting purple on the shimmering blue lyrium dribbling down her chin.  She had his bottle, the big one, the one for the binding ritual, tipped to her mouth, drinking greedily.

Finn stared for a second, which was a second too long.  The others started awake as well, armor scraping and clanging, and the abomination looked up sharply, throwing the remainder of the bottle to the side where ismashed into the stone wall and shattered.  She raised one hand to wipe at her mouth and Finn saw it - the amulet!  He’d managed to grab the piece Vashti had shot from around her neck and fit the three fragments together before everything had gone wrong.  He’d grab it and get clear, and then Ariane could unleash holy fury on this thing.

“A pity,” Xebenkeck said, as Finn lunged up, hand closing around the amulet - and then Vashti’s arrow pierced his hand.  He screamed - and screamed again when the world went white and half his mana burned away.  He fell back to the ground, amulet nailed to his hand, and Xebenkeck sprawled over his feet.  He was dimly aware of someone dragging him back, away from the abomination, as Ariane and Fenris converged on the spot.

Of course.  Too dazed to be terrified, he was calm enough to think it through; it all made perfect sense.  Vashti’d tried the same sharp-shooting trick she had when they entered; he just got in her line of fire.  Either Ariane decided smiting the abomination was worth catching him in the area, or she was quick to realize there was no way he was casting anything with an injury like this.

That was going to be a problem, wasn’t it?

He stopped sliding, and Merrill suddenly dropped into view at his side.  “Guess it’s a good thing you didn’t kill me after all,” she said, lifting his wounded hand without quite the care he would have liked.  She manipulated the amulet, trying to wiggle it free of the arrowhead and making him yelp as pain jolted up his arm.  “Sorry,” she apologized, with a genuinely penitent glance.  “But we haven’t time for gentleness.”  She worked the amulet free and stood, drawing a small knife with her other hand.  Finn looked away, back to the battle, not wanting to see the blade draw blood.

Blood.  Blood magic.  His confused thoughts were lining back up into some semblance of order.  It was critically important that Xebenkeck not just catch them all with the same horrible burning spell she had used before.  Or any spell.

They didn’t have to kill her - she would likely simply animate the corpse anyway. That’s why they were doing the binding; simple physical violence wouldn’t solve this problem.  They just had to keep her from using magic.  As the throbbing pain in his hand attested, there were plenty of ways to do that.

“Get her on the ground!” he shouted.  “Like the dog!”  Vashti’s mabari, having no concern about dropping weapons or losing his footing by dropping to the floor, often rushed enemy mages and knocked them to the ground.  It was usually a stupid thing for the armed warriors to do, since wrestling one opponent made you an easy target for any other enemies, but in this case...

”Dog?” Fenris snarled.  Why was this mage trifling with insults when they had more important things to do?

But beside him, Ariane dropped her twin blades and sprang for the abomination.  Get her on the ground - grapple her, keep her physically contained.  Hawke staggered, but even if the elf was stronger, the human was larger.

Then Ariane swept her feet, and she went down.  Fenris paused, readying his weapon.  If the Dalish elf could hold
her still for even a moment, one well-placed thrust might end all of this. 

It would not be so easy.  The demon evidently lent strength to the mage’s soft body, giving her the advantage on the elven warrior in mass and power, if not in skill.  They thrashed on the ground; but still, if he were careful, judging the trajectory of her movements...

He drew on the power of his brands, the exceptional speed and accuracy they granted him.  The greatsword darted forward like a duelist’s stiletto, unnaturally swift, piercing Hawke from under one arm, through the chest, to under the other.

Everything stopped for a moment; the red-violet light under her skin flickered, even as his brands surged with blue-white power.  “Na via lerno victoria,” he hissed, his thrust forward having brought him close to her face.  Only the living know victory - and the victory was his.  He stood before the blood mage and struck true.  It was not so hard, after all.

Her head lolled toward him, rolling loose on her neck.  Then it twisted, at an impossible angle, and Hawke’s face split in a rictus grin.  “‘Na via’?  And what do you know of life, little mayfly?”  Eyes shining with infernal light, the abomination stood, wrenching his blade from his hands.  “Of life, of mysteries, of pain or of power?”  Fenris watched in shock as the sword slipped slowly free to clatter on the ground.  Blood followed in a great crimson gout, and he could feel, in his brands, the blood magic kindling…

Ariane lunged up, crashing into what had been Hawke, bearing the both of them to the ground.  Fenris looked away briefly - past the archer who stood, arrow to string, eyes darting between the battle, the  trembling surface of the eluvian, and - there, the mages. “Hurry!” he shouted, before lunging to reclaim his sword.

A sense of irritation - Does he think we’re dawdling? - flitted briefly across Merrill’s mind, but it was more critical to maintain focus on this ritual.  That was… that was becoming more difficult, as she was feeling light-headed, and the edges of her vision were getting dark. The room swayed - or maybe she did - but she chanted the spell deliberately, with every ounce of the stubborn determination that had taken her every step down this path.

More life-force ebbed away to power the spell - it was nearly done, almost there - and she dropped to one knee.  Easier that way, it would spoil everything if she fell down, wouldn’t it?

The world narrowed to her own  voice, the texture of the amulet in her bloody hand, and Xebenkeck.  Then: an unwanted interruption, another hand, larger, pierced through and bleeding, thrust into the edges of her vision.  “You have to finish,” the human mage said, as if she weren’t already aware of that.  “T-take some.  Just… not all?  Please?”

Tempting. Freely offered.  I could… no.  Merrill shook her head slowly, not ceasing her incantation.  No.  She had gotten this far without falling to that trap, as they all said she would.  She had enough to do this herself.

“I’m not doing anything else useful! You have to finish the ritual - if you need more power, take it!”

Just enough.

She sagged a little closer to the ground, supporting herself with one hand.  The other held the completed amulet aloft as she chanted the demon’s name three times: “Xebenkeck.”  The first lobe flashed, a white-violet light, and the pool of blood around her - my goodness, is all that mine? - suddenly roiled, sublimating into red vapor as the collected energies knit together into the shape of the spell.  The abomination screamed.

“Xebenkeck.”  Finn could barely make out the dark metal of the holy symbol through the thick, roiling red cloud now, but the second flash of light was easily seen.  Xebenkeck dislodged Fenris with a gutteral shout and tried to struggle to her feet; Ariane clawed and grappled frantically to keep her at least one arm pinioned.

”Xebenkeck!” 

Bright white light flooded the room, blinding Finn.  The abomination shrieked, but the sound was nearly drowned out by a great rushing, as if the Waking Sea itself were rushing down the tunnels to drown them.  Neither compared to enormity of the spell itself, a release of power that shuddered the whisper-thin Veil about them and sent the lurking demons scurrying for safer harbors.

When his vision cleared, he saw that Merrill lay prone, unconscious, on the floor.

The others converged on Marian Hawke, Fenris growling something about betrayal and justice.  Finn thumped down on the ground next to Merrill, fingers reaching for a pulse.  It was there, barely, thready and fading.  But he was in time, he could...

He couldn’t.  He needed both hands for that spell, and one currently had an arrow through it. 

So get it out.  Panic rising, Finn jerked the arrow free and promptly doubled over around his hand.  Maker, it hurt but maybe now...  But no.  His fingers barely twitched when he focused on moving them, pain and injury preventing him from performing the correct articulations. 

She was going to die, and he couldn’t do a single thing about it.

I can.  The voice was so clear, so near, he thought that if he turned around he might see her there, with her lamp and her glassless mirror in hand.  Vera.

“I can’t channel right now!” Finn shook his head. “I have the power, I just can’t shape it!”

I can save her.  You must let me into your mind.

“Let you...?”  Finn’s eyes widened.  Let her possess him?  Like the redoubtable Brother Genitivi wrote that the witches of Rivain did?  Like Anders had allowed his spirit to do?

What if it went wrong? What if it wasn’t actually the spirit of Truth?  He’d been dogged by demons ever since they  got to Kirkwall, whispers in his mind day and night - maybe this was just another trick, a new way to get him to say ‘yes.’ 

What would the others do, if they saw him start to glow like Anders had?  They’d probably try to kill him, and they’d be smart to do it.  And... well... wasn’t Vashti probably going to kill Merrill anyway?

But she saved them.  Twice.  It hardly seemed fair to just give up when maybe he could...

A dozen old lectures on the perils of listening to demons, on how they’d  prey on minds torn by guilt or anger or fear, on how sometimes people just died, and on how a healer would have to accept that Entropy  was the natural twin to Creation echoed in his memory.  But Vera wasn’t a demon; she was a spirit.  But...  “How do I know you’re really Vera?” he asked.

You cannot know.

And that decided him. 

With a psychic shudder, Finn demolished a mental wall that had been decades in the making.  A demon, he thought, would have tried to reassure with a lie.  Truth could only acknowledge that there was no
foolproof way for him to proceed on knowledge alone.  It would take trust. 

Or maybe faith. 

“You may enter.”

Modifié par Corker, 26 janvier 2014 - 06:35 .

[Corker]

“Xebenkeck!”

Vashti squinted against the sudden brilliant light; when it faded, she saw Ariane and Fenris disentangling themselves from the abomination’s body; Finn bent over Merrill’s prone form; the surface of the eluvian boiling like a cauldron.

The eluvian.  She let her bow fall, drawing her knifes.  Duncan had destroyed it so, once.  It might be clean of the darkspawn taint now, but if the great demon had bent it to her aims, then…

No, one last use.  It went to Xebenkeck’s domain?  Then let her return there.  Cast the amulet through the mirror, banish the demon past where any mortal might unleash her.

She pivoted towards the mages.  Merrill looked dead, but she had no tears for the former First.  Giving her life here, to undo some small measure of the harm she had done, was a measure of justice.  Finn, bent over his hand in pain, tried to help her - that was his nature.  Every thing that lived carried its own secrets, and no one who followed Dirthamen’s path could bear to see those lost. 

Would he try to stop her from destroying the eluvian?  Vashti quickened her step, intent on the bloody amulet in Merrill’s hand -

A spring breeze brushed her cheek, and the very earth around her seemed to sigh.  “Finn!” Ariane screamed, off to her left.  “No!”

Vashti’s head snapped on reflex toward Ariane when she shouted, then back to Finn.  His eyes opened, shining gold-white, and light like the morning dawn spilled out from his fingertips.  The allan’isa had sensed it first, but now it was evident to all: Finn was possessed.

The Grey Warden raised her blades in front of her - and hesitated.  Long experience screamed that she should strike quickly, strike hard, before the abomination had a chance to turn and unleash its power.  But… but…

He is strong, she had told Fenris.  Why would he fall now, after their victory?

“I am the sword -!”  The rest of Ariane’s battlecry choked off in a sob, but the allan’isa showed no uncertainty in her actions.  It had taken her a moment to reclaim the blades she had dropped to wrestle Hawke, but now she dashed forward to perform her solemn duty as a mage-protector.  Fenris, growling foreign curses, kept stride with her, his greatsword raised.

Finn - no, the abomination rose in a swift, graceful motion, and Vashti knew her uncertainty had cost them all.  Bright white light exploded in the dim room, dazzling her eyes and disorienting her.  She heard twin metallic crashes as Ariane and Fenris staggered and, she presumed, fell.

She took one breath and then another, head still spinning, and wondered why she was still alive to wonder.

“Vashti Mahariel.”  It was Finn’s voice, but it wasn’t - something else was laced under and through it.  She turned, trying to pinpoint it, and the simple motion made her stumble.  “We met in paths Beyond,” the voice continued, “and spoke of the way things are, rather than the way you would like for them to be. I came to help; having given assistance, I will depart.”

She remembered - the cruel spirit of Truth who had, nonetheless, kept her from harming Finn or giving herself over to the demon.  It had appeared to protect Finn - so it could do this to him, now?  And then - go?  It didn’t make sense, and that made her suspect a demonic motive.  “Why?  What did you do?” she asked.

“I healed the dying mortal.  She turned toward an unpleasant Truth and embraced it, when most mortals would become more obstinate in clinging to Falsehood.  And…” The spirit paused, barely. “Finn wished that she be healed. These things swayed me.”

“Lies,” Vashti heard Fenris grind out.  It sounded as if he and Ariane had unsteadily regained their feet.

“Never,” the spirit said coldly.

And the light went out.

Finn sighed; in the sudden darkness, Vashti could just barely make out the whites of his eyes rolling up as he crumpled to the floor next to Merrill, who was herself stirring.

Swaying on unsure feet, the two warriors drew closer.  “What just happened?” Ariane asked, still very much on her guard.

Fenris was more than on his guard. Vashti judged that he held his blade in check only because she stood poised to intercept it with her dar’missu.  “What happened is that the mage fell.  After all that has happened here, why do you hesitate?  He may have been your friend, but is no longer. Kill him!”

“I did meet a spirit while we were imprisoned Beyond,” Vashti said slowly, “and she gave me aid.  She is one Finn has met before, as a spirit healer.”

“I’ve never heard of an abomination… unabominating like this.”  Ariane’s agreement was still cautious as she looked down at Finn.  “It could have done us great harm while we were stunned, but it didn’t.”

“Or it could be lying within him, waiting to return at another time.”  Fenris cut the air with one clawed gauntlet.  “We have seen this, here in Kirkwall - subtle demons who ride their hosts without physical changes, until they judge the proper moment to attack.”

“Did it work?” asked a groggy voice from the floor.  Finn pulled himself up to a sitting position, then froze at the sight of the ring of steel around him.  “Ah. Right.  I, ehm, I thought this might happen.”

“I don’t sense anything amiss,” Ariane said, brow creasing.

“You wouldn’t,” Fenris insisted.  “Not even the Chantry templars can tell when a mage is possessed.”

“I feel myself,” Finn put in.  “For whatever that’s worth.” He laughed, a nervous sound without humor in it.  “...Not much, probably.” 

“Look around you!  These are the consequences of inactivi--”  Fenris broke off, eyes narrowing, when Vashti began to make a rough, wet noise, deep in the back of her throat.  “Warden, what --?”

She turned and spat - on Finn, catching him right on the temple and cheek.  He shrieked as if he’d been hit with acid.  “Oh. Oh!” he cried in disgust. “And now it’s dripping! That’s -- why? --”  He lifted a hand - healed now, Vashti saw, perfectly pink through the hole in the fox-furred glove - to wipe at it, then clearly thought the better of it.  “Handkerchief,” he muttered, searching the pockets on his belt for the item.  “Was that really necessary?”

“Yes,” Vashti said, not hiding a small smile. She caught Ariane’s eye.  “Flesh is flesh. Never yet met a demon that was disgusted by one kind of flesh but not another.”

“Next time, just kill me,” Finn muttered, scrubbing at his face.

Ariane put up her swords and grinned.  “Glad to have to back, Finn.”

“This is reckless.”  Fenris’s brands pulsed in the dim room.  “You don’t know.” 

“I can know.”  Merrill hadn’t moved, but at some point during the proceedings had opened her eyes.  “It’s in the blood.  Blood, blood magic, spirits… demons… they’re connected.”  She sat up, slowly.  “Would that satisfy you, Fenris?”

“I don’t trust you not to lie.”

Merrill shook her head, but Finn interrupted before she could reply. “I… I’d rather if she didn’t?  I think Vera has returned to the Fade, but… if not… well.  We’d best know now.”  He swallowed audibly.

“I just need a little blood,” Merrill said, extending a hand.  “Just as a component, to examine… I won’t be using it for magic.”

“I’m, uh… familiar with the concept.”  Finn removed a glove, put his hand in Merrill’s, and closed his eyes.

Vashti watched the simple ritual proceed with her hands tight on the hilts of her weapons.  If what Merrill said was true - and from what she understood of blood and magic, it made sense - then they would be fools not to make utterly sure of Finn.  Even the mage himself agreed.  But…

How dare she help.  It was, again, fitting, since Finn had allowed the possession on her behalf.  But she shouldn’t be helpful or kind, as if that could make up for what she had done.  The many dead still demanded justice.

“You’re fine,” Merrill said, after another moment.  Finn sighed with relief; growling, glowering, Fenris finally sheathed his weapon.  “Thank you,” she told Finn, pressing his hand before she released it.  “That was very risky, especially…” She looked up at Vashti.  “Considering everything else.  You probably shouldn’t have gone to the trouble.”

“About that.”  Finn clambered to his feet, straightened his collar, and proposed, “She’s saved us twice, Vashti, and bound the demon.  Don’t you think -”

“The demon.”  The Warden sheathed one dagger and put out a hand; Merrill made a soft “oh!” before reaching up to deposit the talisman into it.  “This first.”

“What are you going to do with it?” Ariane asked.

“Send it back where it came from.” 

The surface of the eluvian had calmed.  A few small ripples chased each other across its surface as she approached, but that was all.  It was as deceptively placid as it had been on that long-ago summer day.

What would have happened, had she not found it?  Merrill would have had no reason to learn blood magic; the clan would still be alive.  Tamlen would not have died in madness as he did.  She would not be fated to die a mile from the sun, darkspawn taint burning in her blood.  Not be tainted, befouled, impure and exiled.

She hadn’t chosen any of that.  This thing, the eluvian, had inflicted it on her.

The embers of her anger over that injustice, always banked and burning, roared up in a heat of rage.  She hurled the talisman through the shimmering surface, and followed with a strike that tried to kill eight years of pain and loss.  The eluvian’s surface went dull and grey, then shattered into hundreds of tiny pieces.

There remained just one task to complete here.

.....…

Merrill debated the relative merit of standing up. On the one hand, it would be more dignified.  On the other hand, ‘not dead’ was still quite a way from ‘feeling well,’ and the ground was rather comforting in its solidity.

Above her head, Fenris argued - of course he did - with the other mage, Finn.  “And I say that for years, I have seen the witch be nothing other than arrogant, foolhardy, and dangerously stubborn.  Do you think a few hours of good intentions,” he spat the words, “are enough to convince me that she is no longer a threat, to herself or to others?”

“Well, she’s got to start somewhere, hasn’t she?  And I think nearly killing herself makes a pretty good case for her motivation!”

She closed her eyes and sighed when she heard the eluvian shatter, across the room.  Xebenkeck had twisted it to her own ends, of course, and since Audacity had never given her good information to start with, she had no way of repairing it… Even if it was for the best, it was hard to know that the one possible good thing that might have come out of all of this was now just a pile of junk.

“Please stop,” she interrupted the two men as Mahariel, grim-faced, returned to loom over her.  “It’s all right.  I… I accept the judgement of the People.”  She took a deep breath and tried to blink away the tears that threatened to form.  “The Keeper is dead.  My clan is dead, and it’s my fault.”

“Vashti --”
“Warden --”

Mahariel held up a hand to silence both men.  “I know what you think,” she pointed to Finn, “and I know what you think,” she pointed to Fenris.  She looked at the allan’isa, Ariane, and asked, “What do you think?”

Ariane seemed surprised to be asked, and looked away for a moment.  “I’m… not sure what I think,” she said slowly.  “I promised you Elgar’nan’s vengeance on the murderers, and I will stand by that promise.  But I confess that I was not expecting to find repentance.”  She studied Merrill, who bore the scrutiny without expression.  Having said that she would accept judgement, she wasn’t going to beg them for one outcome or another.  “Mythal teaches us mercy; Elgar’nan, revenge.  I’m… I’m not sure where the path to justice lies.  I leave it to you.  They were your family.”

Merrill shifted her attention to Mahariel.  Her clan-kin’s face was dark and stony, and surely clouded with memories of all the dead on Sundermount.  It was not an expression that spoke of forgiveness.  “Just… just let me stand, first,” Merrill said.  “Please.”

There came a pause, and then Mahariel extended a hand down to her.  Merrill took it and found herself roughly hauled to her feet, inches from the Warden.  “Ir abelas,” she said, expecting the short prayer of regret and sorrow to stand as her last words.

But no cold blade came between her ribs.  Eyes narrowed, mouth contorted in a snarl, Mahariel rapped out: “Merrill.  Welcome. To the Grey Wardens.”

[Corker]

The stalwart guard captain kept their exit clear, as promised. Her men cheered as the news got out - the former Champion of Kirkwall had been destroyed. “We’ve still got a lot to do,” Aveline said. “The sun is nearly down, and the undead that are left will be out in force once it’s dark.”

“Don’t forget the Veil tears,” Finn put in wearily, leaning heavily on his staff. “Someone… someone should really do something about the Veil tears.”

“Won’t be us,” Vashti said.

“What?” Aveline and Ariane chorused in surprise together.

“He needs away from here,” Vashti pointed to Finn. He looked up at her, mouth half-open as if to protest - then he swallowed and nodded. She valued, even admired, his strength, but there was no reason to test it further. Kirkwall was not good for him. “The templar Knight-Commander will kill her if he sees her,” she pointed to Merrill, talking quietly, hand-in-glove with Varric. Between events of the past and the present, she did not want to rely on the shadow of the Right of Conscription to stay Ser Cullen’s blade. “You have guards, templars, and mages. You are not helpless.”

“I wasn’t expecting the Grey Wardens to run from a fight,” Aveline said.

Vashti shrugged, refusing to let the other woman’s cold disappointment inside. “Not my fight anymore.”

“Hey.” Varric interrupted his conversation with Merrill to interject. “They helped a lot already. We got this.”

Aveline glared at the dwarf, then turned abruptly on her heel. “The abominations are dead, but we’re not done here yet! Squads, form up on your leaders and prepare to continue our sweep!” She stalked off, barking orders to her men, and sending messengers to take the latest battlefield news to Viscount’s Keep.

“And… and if you ever see Isabela again, tell her I think of her often,” Merrill continued as if no one had said anything at all. “And tell Aveline I’m so sorry.”

“We covered that one, Daisy. Look, Bianca and I have to go help Madame Guard-Captain with the defense. Take care of yourself… and…” He gave a lopsided grin, although his eyes were damp, and Vashti turned away from the scene. Still, she heard behind her, “When you rediscover the Warden griffons, I want you to write and tell me, okay?”

“Fenris,” Vashti called, mostly so she wouldn’t have to hear Merrill’s tearful good-byes. His hangdog head instantly swiveled her way. “Ma serranas. You help was appreciated.”

He nodded - and Varric brushed past her, with a quick but piercing look and a murmured, “Thanks” - For the city? For his ‘Daisy’? - and then tilted his head after the departing dwarf. “Then I will consider my debt paid. But my fight is not yet over; I stand with my… with my friends this night.”

“Ostagar is open to all of the elvhenan,” Ariane called - she stood a few paces apart, nearer to Merrill. Of the two mages, it was obvious which the allan’isa considered more of the risk. “If you ever wish to return to the homeland -”

Fenris gave her a very small smile. “Thank you, but… that seems unlikely.” He slid his eyes to Merrill, grimaced and snarled, “Try not to bring madness and ruin to the Grey Wardens as well.”

She only looked back solemnly. “I will. Walk your path free, Fenris.”

He spat, then hurried to catch up with Aveline and Varric.

“Can we go now?” Finn asked plaintively.

-----------

Dog leapt and cavorted, practically beside himself with joy. Vashti had to smile when he paused to lick at her hand before bounding off again. The shemlen, she had to admit, might be onto something with dogs.

Tamlen did not smile. Arms crossed over his chest, he glared at the trio down the hillside from them. “You said you were going to kill her. She deserves it, for what she did!”

Vashti nodded agreement. “She does. And if the Creators will it, she may yet die. Joining the Grey Wardens is dangerous. And painful.” And much worse, in her own opinion, than a simple, clean death. She had never held with Alistair’s position that to be counted a Warden was an honor; it was a deadly, poisonous burden, one that she would rather place on Merrill’s shoulders than some clan’s promising young First.

“Good. I hope she does die.” He scowled up at her. “It’s not right.”

Vashti studied him for a moment. It was hard to see such vicious anger in a da’len, but didn’t he have cause? “The Dalish have little, so we must waste little,” she finally said. “A broken dar’missan can be made into a dar’misu; a broken dar’misu turned into knife; a broken knife turned into an awl or some other tool. She has power and knowledge, and the Dalish Wardens have need of both. The Grey Wardens are not,” she added dryly, “much concerned with ‘fair’ or ‘right.’”

“Then the Grey Wardens are horrible!” he declared indignantly.

She looked away, downslope, and nodded. No sense denying it. “We are.”

He spat a curse that would have made his mother yank his ears and took off downhill. He paused only to scream, red-faced, at Merrill before pelting ahead, into the trees. “Follow him,” Vashti told Dog, who immediately whuffed an assent and loped off to keep the child out of danger. She lengthened her own steps to catch up with Finn, Ariane, and the witch.

Merrill walked a little apart, face cast down in shame. (If there was grief there, too, Vashti was unwilling to see it.) But she had made no moves to run and seemed to accept the judgement levied upon her. Ariane still watched her, and that was as it should be.

“It was a wise decision,” her friend told her, as she fell in step. “Of course it pains him, but I think this is for the best.”

“Ma serranas,” she answered quietly. As always, Ariane knew what she needed to hear, before she even knew it herself.

“I was thinking,” Ariane went on, with just a moment’s hesitation, “that he will need somewhere to go, once we return home. My clan is thriving, we could take him in.”

Vashti considered. “Will your Keeper allow it?”

“What, because of the so-called curse?” Ariane scoffed. “Then we will adopt him, formally. He will be as much ours as if he married in, and no longer Sabrae.”

That sounded possible. “You know a bonded pair who would do this?”

“I --” Ariane broke off and made a sound - clearing her throat? “Yes. Yes, I think there are a few couples who would.”

“Then let it be so,” Vashti said, with a combination of weariness and relief. “The Grey Wardens are of no clan and all clans; he will be with yours. And the Sabrae will be no more.”

”Oh, Vashti…” Ariane’s eyes widened. “Abelas, I didn’t mean -”

“No. No, it is better this way.”

Walking along in silence, Finn pressed his lips into a thin line. A loving couple. A wanted child.

He hadn’t spoken with any of them about what he’d seen in the Fade. It seemed too personal. Vashti, he was sure, would never bring it up. Ariane might think that he was just another figment of her imagination, some element of her mind trying to warn her, cloaked in his form.

The pieces ought to fit together. A wife for Vashti, a child for Ariane, a family for young Tamlen. Happily ever after, like the stories.

But it didn’t… it didn’t work that way. The Dalish wouldn’t recognize that bond, for one thing. Ghilan’nain’s Sisters frequently seemed closer than religious oaths might warrant, but they were united by their pledges to Andruil, not by a bonding ceremony. And Vera had said something - he didn’t even try to recall the exact words - but it sounded like there was a fundamental mismatch, anyway. Then, the child needed a home now, not whenever Ariane and her Keeper worked out whether or not she would bond with that First fellow.

He glanced at Merrill, thinking of the pile of silver-grey shards they’d left behind in the undercity. Sometimes, no matter how you worked at it, the pieces just never came together the way you wanted.