The scent of death is immediate, bitter like metal in the back of Sten's throat when he breathes in. He does not have to look up to know where he has been taken.
He moves his fingers, just to see if he can.
A thumb, then a forefinger.
The gentler scent of wheat breaks through between the atmosphere of decay as he stands. His back is completely rigid, surrounded by the bodies and long tan stalks. Both are overheated by the noonday sun. Flies whisper around him.
He presses his hand to his face in the field. Covers his eyes. The sunlight falling over him is compromised by a wash of crimson in his vision when he pulls it away. He lifts his other hand, attempting to clear it, and there is only more spreading over him.
A blue sky, ripped through with red when he looks up. He remembers that.
Clouds pass above.
And Sten is a shadow, surrounded on all sides by snow capped mountains. The demon called Sloth hesitates next to him, wearily contemplating the scene. It whispers with a sigh. There is no solace here for it here, just as there is none for Sten. And so the demon groans and then it hovers and curls inward within Sten's chest, churning his heart within an exhausted embrace. It is intrigued and displeased at the same time.
Its fingers stretch and grasp with the will of a starving man at his last moment, and then fade away.
Sten looks around as the world disintegrates into a velvet fog. He wonders if he will be discarded now, and if this is to be his last moment. He can feel the demon's attention already beginning to ebb away from him. It shambles away, warbling and moaning, gurgling like a brook in a forest.
Sten's hand drops to his side, and he accepts his fate. He remembers the last time that he spoke the prayer that must follow, but cannot recall how long ago it even was. Perhaps it was centuries. The words flare to life inside of him nonetheless.
"Shok ebasit hissra," Sten whispers for the dead, looking up into the nothing. "Meraad astaarit..."
The demon's attention snaps back to him.
The speed of its head turning on its axis is startling, the speed with which it returns to Sten even more so. And suddenly there is picking and tearing at his body and his muscles in the fade - for there is no other place he can be, Sten knows- as the sloth demon pulls and pulls and pulls with renewed energy. It rips at his body until he is nothing more than a spread of flesh on parched and colorless ground.
And then it hovers over him. It is a mass of red and white falling into exhaustion again. It groans when it finally speaks.
"I would give you peace," it murmurs, unsettled perhaps because Sten has never truly required such a thing. It continues anyway, picking and sorting through him. There is an air of trepidation to its movements as it works.
Peace for the demon. A memory for its victim.
The fade encompasses them both.
And Sten's body is searched like a dead bandit rotting in a trench. One who has little to offer other than stale bread and perhaps a coin. His eyes stare upward at nothing, his mind focused on quelling any thoughts before they are formed. The demon sets both of them aside.
The demon moves its attention and pulls at his tongue, listening to old arguments with the musing hum of a gossiping old woman. Then its hands are cut by the sword called Asala when it slips fingertips through the realm of his ribcage. And a mabari hides unexpectedly beneath a tendon, jumping as it trots away into the distance. The demon ignores its wagging tail. It grabs at Sten's throat instead, where rote memorizations of the Qun appear in a burst of sound, and pulls at his braids while its own rotting breath is sucked through clenched teeth.
Sten fractures when it finally presses through his eyes, where its curiosity mingles with delight when the image of his brothers sleeping by the fire appears.
Temptation runs through them both, a shiver along shared spines.
The laughter of the dead men trails upward along the demon's grotesque arms like smoke as it digs deeper. And the demon chokes with relief, bubbling out a strangled noise that echoes hideously. Its own pain begins to evaporate away. It rebuilds Sten with languid finality then, stitching his body together like a quilt to warm them both.
And it sinks deep into Sten until they are both little more than one tired man who has found solace within a memory of those he has lost.
"Shok ebasit hissra," the demon whispers.
His brothers awaken.
The warriors laugh, forming in their camp like mushrooms bursting forth from a patch of moss around him. They are tinted green at their inception, and then mature into softer hues until only their shadows betray their origins.
It is garish at its completion. They smell of sweat and mutton mixing with the fire. And Sten refuses to contemplate why the sounds of the camp, with its cooking and chatter, hurt him so much. The only consolation is in knowing that not even the demon can hide from his grief in such a place.
The demon groans. And Sten stares into the distance. Still recovering from being in pieces, his stomach pinches with horror.
It is not a memory. The demon has wrought a terrible dream.
And so he stares into the distance and ignores it. But as time begins to stretch around him, lengthening into minutes and then into hours, he finds himself adding a stray piece of tinder to the fire, scattering it from his hands while the flames lick at his fingers. And when the men grow loud he tells them to behave. It is something he does more out of habit than a genuine belief that they will do so.
The fog lingers at the edge of his vision, staining everything until Sten has the faint sensation that he is lost at sea.
There is little to do but join them at their camp, and so after a long time Sten finally does. He knows how dangerous it is to engage. But at the fire there is food, and certainty, and friends. All are cradled by the sort of warmth that can only be conjured by such a trio.
I am tired, he thinks to himself.
Sten will not let the demon defile that day further. It will not destroy this memory with magic. He tells himself that is why he sits with his brothers, moving just as he did so long ago. It becomes easier after a while, performing each small task with meticulous attention to detail. Reliving the hours.
And Sten eats with the dead over and over again, knowing in his heart that he should not.
He does not know how much time passes after that. The scene repeats, expanding and perfecting itself through repetition. The flames lick at Sten's fingers as he adds tinder once again in the camp. Beyond the fire with its cooking pot the mountains are still frozen, and even the flames grow icy against his skin whenever the wind catches them.
An upswell of sound in the distance distracts him from the temperature and he looks up. As was their nature, the men argue about food. Sten can recite the entire conversation from memory. He has done so many times and ignores them. The sound has come from another time and place.
"Shanedan," he says.
The elf mage who is a Warden of Ferelden appears as cracked pieces at the edge of the camp, where the fog lingers, and then she appears as a child. Finally she blooms upward into adult with sharp eyes who is still diminuitive in her heavy robes. The fog picks at her, testing her edges and memories while they fray like threads.
Surana.
He tells himself that he knew she would arrive at some point. Relief slips through him that she has.
Sten glances over at the dead men arguing. "Hush," he calls out to them. "We have a guest."
Surana approaches him. "Sten," she says softly, for she has always spoken to him in such a way, "what are you doing?"
He gestures to his brothers roughly. "Make room at the fire," he orders.
He avoids meeting her gaze or answering her question. He tells himself that it is indifference and not shame that flows through him as she takes in the surrounding scene. Her expression grows uneasy.
The dead men around him obey Sten immediately, just as they did in life, offering her a seat between them that she does not take. Sten knew that she would not. But nothing about the Warden particularly defiles the memory when she appears and so he is not concerned. On the contrary, it feels somehow appropriate that she is there with his brothers.
She sits down next to him. It is possible he could gather them all up in a small moment of weakness and keep them. He pushes the thought down, even when the demon is delighted by it.
"Basalit-an," the demon whispers. "Ebasit Asala-taar...?"
The demon continues to seduce him, offering comfort like drops of wine in his mouth before a beheading. Offering him the things that it believes he wants.
And Surana stares up at him, sitting by the fire and holding her body together with her arms wrapped tightly around herself. Pieces of her try to escape. A ribbon in her hair succeeds. It falls away until it is a child running through a delicate veil of snow.
Sten glances at her with a grim expression. He has always wondered what she looked like with her hair down. Known, with a soundless grumble of irritation whenever the thought occured, that she is startlingly beautiful either way. He is heavy suddenly, and exhausted again. He closes his eyes and his hands drip.
The demon chuckles and pulls another ribbon out of her hair.
Surana ignores it. She repeats Sten's name to bring him back. "What's happening here?" she asks.
"Dinner, obviously," he responds. He gestures with his hand. "Though I don't suggest you eat anything they cook."
Droplets of blood scatter away from his fingers.
The fade is a strange place. Along with his own temptations, Sten can feel the demon arguing with Surana almost petulantly, recoiling with each of her rejections and then punishing her like a scorned lover who still expects her to come back in a fit of despair. It crushes and traps her, pushing her into cupboards and screeching that she is an abomination with a voice that sounds shrill and old. It follows the rage with a pull at the fabric draped over her shoulders, apologizing and hushing her with an embrace that is more appeasing than affectionate.
And yet, it does not break her. Surana does not give in to her own memories.
Surana listens to the men as they sigh over their dinner, and refuses once again when they beckon her to warm herself by the fire between them. She shakes her head and balks away as if they are made of fire when they offer her bread.
"Can we not go home?" one of them whispers, reaching out to her but looking at Sten.
Sten's expression grows hard. "No."
Surana leans toward him. "None of this is real, Sten," she tells him in a whisper. When she looks up at him her eyes flicker ghoulishly between memories of the First Enchanter's crumbling books and a templar Sten has never met lingering in the hallways with her.
"I know," Sten rumbles.
Her mouth drops into a thin line at how easily and firmly he is stationed at the fire, her eyes widening impercetibly. She raises a brow. "What do you mean, you know?"
He gestures around them with a hand and grumbles at her. "This is a dream. I'm not a fool, Warden. I remember the karashok over there having his head torn off."
"At least it's not a great loss," the karashok quips lightly.
He sighs at that. "I know it's a dream," he repeats, watching his brothers. His expression grows softer. "But," he adds slowly, "it is a good dream."
Surana frowns, but she nods and for the moment she does not press him further. She places her hand on his arm, a gesture he has never needed, and they watch as the dead mean carouse.
It amazes Sten that her confidence does not recede in the Fade, that she treats the entire ordeal as little more than a cloudburst above her that will pass. Every time the demon locks her in a cupboard she simply climbs out. And when her fingers curl around the fabric of his sleeve Sten is glad that he has never cut out her tongue with the dagger he keeps in his belt for just such a purpose. Mages in Par Vollen are not allowed the liberties of those in Ferelden.
She moves her attention away from the camp and back to Sten. "This isn't like you," she tells him. The demon drags her by her hair and wails, calling for those who would chain her. "You're supposed to be practical," she adds with a pale smile.
"Yes," he replies, memorizing the Qun with the light of a candle in a stone room. "And what has that accomplished?"
Death. Dishonor.
It has accomplished exile.
And his brothers eat their bread, and then their stew, hating all of it. Sten knows because he felt exactly the same way. They converse in hushed whispers around the embers of the fire with ardent cynicism as night stretches into morning, gathering their voices into laughter whenever the mountains around them become too much to bear.
The snow-capped peaks are surrounded by green fog.
And Sten sits with Surana, watching as the true danger of the Fade settles within him . It swells with a burst of fear inside his chest. Surana is a warrior who is a mage, and who is impossibly a woman with hair the color of the fields he cannot escape. These men were his brothers, and now they are beneath those fields.
And he could just stay there, with all of them.
Kadan.
Sten does not say it, but it rings throughout the fog nonetheless. And with a thought they are all dragged backward from end of the night and into the noon of the previous day. His stomach lurches, disoriented, and then there is only the crack of shifting wood as it burns anew. The scent of boiling tea.
The demon chuckles lazily.
The men are hungrier, suddenly, and yet still cold. The fire is bright and fresh, warming their faces whenever they lean toward it and away from the weak sunlight pouring down from the sky.
"If you stay here," Surana says, watching everything, "then they died for nothing."
Sten nods, but does not move from his place at the fire.
Sten is aware that she is allowing him more time and leniency than she should. If he was someone else, if he had been the dwarf who is never sober or the maleficar witch, she wouldn't have let him linger in such a dangerous way. She would have grown cross with him. And there would be no encouragements whispered to him like secrets: that the mabari would miss him terribly if he never returned, and that the cookies she bought him at the inn would go to waste.
"They have frosting on them," she insists quietly.
"Of course they do," he responds. He grumbles without malice.
The grumble dies in his throat. He can almost taste the dust of powdered sugar. He supposes that the baked goods were long ago tucked in his pack back in the stone tower he is currently lying in, snoring like an idiot next to her. He frowns.
"When we leave," Sten muses flatly, "you will be a woman who fights."
And he will be an exile.
"Yes," Surana replies. The staff appears in her hand and she taps it on the ground. "I'm already fighting right here. That's how it works." She pauses. "Neither of us will be anything at all if we stay in this place."
She smiles, believing that such a declaration will spur him back to reality. The staff disappears like a parlor trick from her fingers. She places her hands on her hips and looks up at him very sternly.
It is a ridiculous expression on her delicate elven face. Even she knows it, and there is a hint of mirth hiding behind her eyes. They are both in on a wonderful joke, even in such a terrible place.
A secret for just the two of them, like the cookies.
And Surana is mistakenly not helping her own cause with her declaration. For a moment Sten thinks of the desire demon with its enthralled Templar, back in the crumbling lower halls of the mage tower. He had told her that she should leave them both as they were. Leave the Templar to die in his dream, because he was weak and would learn nothing by being taken from it.
The irony is not lost on Sten.
The demon rouses itself between them, just long enough for another ribbon to be gleefully ripped away. Surana's hair tumbles down fully then, settling at her shoulders. Sten drinks in the shifting sight of it with melancholy eyes.
He moves his gaze back down to the fire, where it shifts with fresher pieces of birch and boxwood. The flames are soundless, casting themselves with hints of green hues.
None of it is real or even possible.
And it is silent all around them, so much so that even the demon seems to be waiting for Sten's next action. The sounds of the camp grow weary and die completely away.
Surana tries again, but her voice is unsteady. "Sten, you know I won't leave here without you."
He glances at her. "I know."
Her eyes widen. "Then why aren't you moving?"
The Sloth demon believes that it will ensnare him with the answer. It grips at Sten's heart with delight. And the threat grows inside of him until it sublimates into anger with a crash.
Sten stares down at Surana. He grabs her by the fabric of her collar, unceremoniously, and he kisses her.
Her breath catches.
Sten kisses the breaking pieces of Surana before she can react, with parted lips, experimentally pressing his own lack of soul into hers as he dips his head down. Her heart scatters in response, spreading like ink in too much water. It spills and overflows against him.
He sinks, drowning in it and utterly furious.
And he is surprised, only mildly, that after a moment she kisses him back. He reaches out his other hand and cradles her head when she does. Her hair is soft between his fingers, and if there is the smell of forest and a hasty splash of perfume on her it is only because he remembers her that way when she plucked him from Lothering's rusted cage.
Surana wraps her arms around his broad shoulders and smiles against his lips. "You big softie," she murmurs.
Sten does not question the Qun as he kisses her, nor how easy it is to forget the passages in the fade where they are no longer anyone at all. They both know that he will never speak of it again.
He grumbles as she sullies the moment with a kiss on his nose. "I had no intention of staying here," he mutters.
The demon balks back from him in surprise at the statement.
Surana laughs. She then draws a sword from her belt to hand to him, rebuilding herself and pushing away from him so that he may do the same. It takes him far longer than it should.
The staff appears again and she twirls it counter-clockwise a single time. Light shatters around them into a cloud of bright dust.
And Sten stands up, with an expression he schools into careful neutrality, to prepare for battle. "I will leave this place," he tells the receding fog. His chest rumbles in disgust that he is even still there. His heart fractures at how he will escape.
The fade swells and expands around him in response. It is his brothers who rise to meet him.
"We won't let you leave us," they whimper, with words that ache with echoes of the demon, and without pride. "Why would you leave us?"
Sten lifts the sword high, and holds the pieces of himself together. He brings it down upon them.
Kadan.