Author's note: This is a one-shot add-on to my WIP, Pride's Price. You need not have read it to understand this, but it certainly adds to its depth. Also, the whole 'branches' concept is not my own. Credit goes to Evren over on ao3. Go over there and check out her main story "Wolf in the Breast". While you're there, read everything else of hers.
"You are wise, to send her away, Dread Wolf," Mythal told Fen'Harel as the eluvian went dead after the Inquisitor's departure.
"I had nothing to do with it. The choice was her own." Fen'Harel turned to her eyes shadowed with some emotion. "Will you choose as she did? Will you forsake the insanity of the City? There is nothing there for you, Mythal."
"There is revenge there, Wolf. All that I have sought for centuries. I will not pass it by, when it stands so close."
Fen'Harel nodded, expecting her answer. "Very well. Come with me. The entrance is not far."
The Great Wolf began to walk through the fade, Mythal, his ancient friend, at his side. The paths of the Beyond ran straight and true under his feet, failing to lead him in endless circles as they would any other. But he was their creator, and the traps knew their master.
Mythal looked about in interest, her head swinging from side to side as she observed their surroundings. Slowly, almost as to be unnoticeable, the features of the Beyond were changing around them. No longer the expansive green, now the sky was shot through with lines of white. The lines grew in length and breadth, the scrub at their feet shrank away, and hard-packed dirt became loose gravel.
"Where are we?" Mythal asked. "This is like no area of the fade I have ever seen."
"Nor will you," Fen'Harel told her, making a vague gesture with his left hand, and causing the green to vanish from the sky entirely. "It exists only beneath our feet, and only so long as we walk upon it."
Mythal glanced backwards, observing that the gravel vanished into the white mere feet behind her. She reached out with her magic, and encountered a fragile bubble of Fen'Harel's magic enveloping them.
"Desist," he snarled at her. "It is not easy to lead you to the City. I left no path for a reason, and forging one without breaking the defenses is difficult."
"Why bother? There will be nothing to defend, shortly."
Fen'Harel shook his head. "What do your threads tell you, Mythal? What do you see when you weave your web of fate? What should happen, if I made the City suddenly accessible? How would the Andrastians react, upon setting foot inside its halls?"
Mythal scowled, "I do not know. I have never been able to see your City. It lies beyond my grasp. The branches do not touch this part of the Beyond."
Fen'Harel's smile was grim, as the scenery changed again.
No longer a featureless white, vague shapes shimmered in the distance, appearing and disappearing at random. Some were small and scuttling, repulsive like rodents, but just as unlikely to cause real harm. Others were larger, four-legged and swift, with odd protuberances along the spines.
A few more steps, and the images began to solidify. The small, scuttling shapes were reminiscent of rodents, but were the size of mabari, with gleaming red eyes and sores oozing puss matting the few patches of fur that still hung onto their mangy skins.
The larger creatures were the sizes of horses, with exposed ribs and beating hearts. Children, consumed by the monsters, cried out for freedom from within the cage of the ribs, their teeth sharp from eating the flesh of their captors. Horns, corkscrewed into the skull by some great force, dripped blood in an endless stream onto the forelegs of the beasts, leaving dark footprints of blood in it wake.
"What are these things you have created, Fen'Harel?" Mythal asked, drawing away in disgust.
Fen'Harel grabbed her arm, to keep her from straying beyond the path. "I know not what you see, Mythal. This is the place of nightmares. Each individual experiences something uniquely horrifying.
"And you, Fen'Harel? What does the Dread Wolf see in his castle of despair?"
Fen'Harel cast her a glance. "My traps cannot catch me," he lied. "I command the nightmare, and it flees before me. I see nothing but more of the Beyond."
Slowly, they left the monstrosities behind, only to encounter an innocuous field of waving stalks of wheat. They passed through, and nothing changed. No enemies popped out at them, no pits plunged them into the ground.
"What traps are these, Wolf, that we pass them so freely?"
"Traps of the mind. This one allows you in, but never out. There is no edge to this place, no wall to run up against." Fen'Harel told her, waving his hand.
Between one step and the next, the environment changed again. Now it was a roaring blizzard. A step, and they waded through lava up to their thighs. Step, and they were drowning in an undertow. Step, step, step. Each pace put them into another deadly zone. Freeing, burning, drowning, impalement. Their skin flaked off with the sand in a storm, their lungs collapsed under the pressure of a heavy sky. An endless menagerie of ways to die flicked by with each step they took, each impact of their feet upon the ground. Where would it end?
Mythal looked up, and Fen'Harel's hand was before her. She took it gratefully, clasping his fingers with far more strength now than she had in ages past, when she lay dying in his arms.
His free hand came up, covering her eyes, and she allowed it. She even cooperated, closing her lids and doing her best to block the sound from her ears. He mumbled under his breath, nonsense words that she focused on, using their sounds to strip away her perceptions of the place in which they stood.
She didn't know how long they stood there, with his hand upon her eyes and his voice in her ears. But his mumbling faded away, his hand dropped away, and they stood in a peaceful glen. A brook laughed as it flowed a few feet away, birds hopped through the branches above, singing songs of joy, and the sun above was gentle and bright.
"Welcome to the Black City, Mythal."
Mythal looked around, soaking in the serenity of the area. Then she fixed him with an intense stare. "Where is your corruption, Dread Wolf? Where is the madness? Has the Trickster finally turned his gaze on me?"
He did not so much as smile at her. "You have one day," he told her. "Twenty-four hours. Go where you will, do what you want. I will not keep you from anything you desire. But at the end of that time, we shall leave; no matter the status of your quest."
She looked at him. Took in his sombre expression, and the will of steel beneath. He meant what he said, and had the power to back it up. He could force her from this place, and she would be unable to stop him.
"Do what you must, Dread Wolf."
He nodded once, then stepped back.
Mythal turned her awareness inward, to that part of herself that was connected by innumerable threads to the world around her. Never before had she been able to see anything inside the City. Always those threads had been dead to her, cut short before she ever breached the walls. But now, as she stood within its confines, the Black City finally gave up its secrets.
The lines of possibility shone bright in her mind's eye, glimmering threads of chance. Fen'Harel thought them woven like a tapestry, all coming together to form some sort of grand picture. The reality was far more complex.
Fate was not planned, there was no grand master pulling the strings, unless that person was she. Free will was, and as such, the future branched out before her like the limbs of a tree. At the base was the present, the reality that existed in that moment. Upwards from there were the choices to be made, each one forming its own line. They split from there, as each created their own string of decisions. Then they branched, and branched again into infinity, the endless lines blinding in their intensity.
Each person was their own tree, the branches of their trees - their decisions - merging and splitting from the trees around them as each person met and affected the choices of another. It was limitless and magnificent. In the days of El'vhen'han, Mythal had lost decades following the decisions of a single individual.
But time was a precious commodity these days, and no more precious than it was in this very moment. Time was passing as she stood staring at her own tree. The City was massive, almost limitless in its scope. Fen'Harel had spent the greater part of three centuries crafting it. With a limit of twenty-four hours, she would never search the whole thing. So she was going to cheat.
Mythal focused her attention on her tree and concentrated on her once-husband Elgar'nan. He who had murdered her with his own hand, he who had betrayed her to her death, he to whom she had sworn vengeance. A small section of her branges lit with silver fire, and she searched through them for a location. She did not seek to see the future interaction with him, only his location. She would live that moment fully in the present. It was a matter of seconds to find the correct path to tread.
Mythal opened her eyes, and began to walk.
Though there were no sounds behind her, Mythal had no doubt that Fen'Harel walked in her shadow. He was here only reluctantly, to prove that Elgarn'nan was already dead and beyond her vengeance. He would be with her, wherever she went.
It was a comforting sensation.
Mythal had not feared anything for almost eight hundred years. But eight hundred years was a long time to be alone, without the company of any who remembered her as she truly was. And Fen'Harel was her oldest and dearest friend.
The small path of forest protecting the glen faded away, and Mythal stepped out from the shade of the trees into a beautiful meadow.
The whispers began immediately.
There weren't words, at first. Just a subtle buzzing against the edge of her ear, a vibration as slight as a forgotten sigh. It wavered along the edges of her consciousness, tap tap tapping at the door to her mind. But as they traveled the meadow, as they approached the grand palace her Sight told her Elgar'nan hid inside, the whispers grew louder.
They spoke to her without voices, told tales without words. She was offered riches beyond vice, power beyond imagining. Elgar'nan was placed, bound and helpless, on a table before her, a dagger clutched in her hand. All she need do was agree, accept, take the whispers into herself. They were helpless without her, weak without her strength. But together, they could be so much more. Elgarn'an would die under her blade, Andruil would cower before her again. Fen'Harel's strength would pale before her own - he would finally bow his head to her.
Mythal gasped and shook her head.
Red lyrium was growing up around her body with alarming speed. Both her feet were already captured, as were her thighs and hips. Her right hand, dangling at her side, had been captured as well, and the crystal was rapidly creeping over her elbow and ribs. A red haze obscured her vision, but she could still see Fen'Harel, as he dodged from place to place, retaining his freedom - for the moment.
"Mythal!" he screamed, his voice hoarse. "Wake, Mythal!"
Mythal poured the strength of a dragon into her limbs, effecting the change and breaking free of the corrupting crystal. She took to the sky, snagging the back of Fen'Harel's furs with the tip of one talon. She kicked out with her back feet, flicking lyrium from her scales, removing them with sharp claws before they took hold of her again.
"It is gone," Fen'Harel told her with his characteristic calm.
Mythal grunted in acknowledgement, reaching the top of a tower with a few beats of her strong wings. She landed with a one-two-three beat of her limbs, her fourth held high to avoid crushing the Wolf. He twisted in her grasp, swinging up onto the back of her talon. As he swarmed up her foreleg, she was already tearing into the roof. Moments later, they dropped through the opening, Mythal returning to her human form as Fen'Harel landed with the grace of a cat, still an elvhen.
"Do not allow your mind to wander," Fen'Harel told her. "The City is worse than the Void ever was. The red lyrium here more aggressive and subtle than that found in the waking world."
"So I see," Mythal said blandly, digging out shards of red crystal from the joints of her armor and crushing them under her heavily-armored boot. "What is it?"
Fen'Harel, rather than answer, headed for the door.
"Will you not answer me, old friend?" Mythal asked, following him down a steep set of stone stairs.
"Why, when you already know the answer?"
Mythal chuckled. They had always played games of this nature. She knew things because of her branches; he, because of the spirits he conversed with. Always they tried to make the other give up information. Sometimes she succeeded, sometimes he did. But it was not the victory, but the game that they both enjoyed.
Fen'Harel stopped at the bottom of the stairs, again allowing her to decide where they would go.
After a brief pause to consult the branches on a direction, again avoiding the actual confrontation with Elgar'nan that she was so looking forward to, Mythal stepped off to the right.
It was the smell that alerted her first. The bright copper tang in the air, thick enough to taste. It coated her tounge, slicked the back of her throat. She gagged on it, coughing on nothing as her lungs filled with the thickening sludge of rapidly cooling blood.
Then there were the screams.
Echoing from nowhere, there was the shriek of pained surprise, the roar of a charge. The dying gurgle of fluid-filled lungs. The clash of metal on metal, the chant of magic spells, the crackle of the discharge of energy. The twang of a bow, the grunt of the arrow's impact.
Her hair was disturbed by the arch of a blade, her feet slipped in pools of something that was not there. She doubled over as a phantom blade pierced her ribs, toppled as her head was separated from her shoulders.
Fen'Harel thrust his hands under her arms, drug her around the corner.
The world went silent.
Mythal gasped, hands flying to her throat. She was still alive. "What-" she choked.
"They went mad. Fought each other through the halls. Shed blood countless times." Fen'Harel poured precious energy into her with the hand on her shoulder even as he looked around the empty hall alertly. "I do not know what caused it, only that it happened. They killed each other, Mythal. Fought battles over and over until there was a victor. The violence is soaked into the land. This is still the fade, after all. And blood affects change here the fastest." He finally looked at her, standing and offering her his hand. "You have twelve hours."
Mythal accepted his hand up.
"Elgar'nan is that way," Fen'Harel pointed down another path.
"So you no longer deny he is here?" Mythal asked, going where he pointed.
"He never left - I did not claim that he did. He is simply no longer living."
"Who killed him?" Mythal asked, deciding to play along.
"I do not know. I did not come this deep into the City once I realized what had happened. The madness here is dangerous even for me."
Mythal was surprised to hear his voice shake, and she looked over to see him pale and sweating with fatigue. "What ails you?" she asked him. "You were hale a few minutes ago."
His grin was mirthless and broken. "It has been hours, Mythal. You have only thirty minutes to find Elgar'nan."
Mythal came to an abrupt halt, dragging him to a stop beside her. "Are you twisting time, Trickster? Do you steal it from me?" she accused.
"Look behind us, Mythal, before you accuse me of duplicity."
Mythal did as she was bid, and gasped. Down the hallway hey had just traversed, shadows of them still walked. Overlapped on each other, the after-images formed a picture of sorts, like images drawn on the corners of pages, then flipped rapidly from start to finish. Each step was clearly visible, the slight bob in their heights as they followed their stride. Even the swing of their arms was clear, moving back and forth across the distance of their steps.
"That is us?" she asked.
"For the last eleven hours. We move so much faster now than we did then, we can still see where we were," Fen'Harel told her. "You know I have no ability to use time-magic. That was always Andruil's specialty. I did not even know we were in it, until we escaped."
Mythal believed him.
She turned around, and there was a door before her.
"Elgar'nan lays beyond."
"Yes," she snarled.
The door swung open with barely a touch, and what lay beyond caused Mythal to immediately double over and retch. There was only the briefest of pauses, before Fen'Harel joined her in voiding his stomach.
She turned away, wiping her mouth with a conveniently placed tapestry. "That was…?" she couldn't bring herself to say it. Surely that, that...thing...was not Elgar'nan.
"Yes," Fen'Harel croaked. "Once."
"Then he is truly dead, and suffered more in his last moments then even I wished."
"Yes."
Mythal sighed and closed her eyes. Letting go of the burning need for revenge was impossible. But Fen'Harel had spoken the truth from the beginning. All the gods of the Pantheon were dead. Murdered at the hands of their kin. And now the same madness that had driven them to assault each other was seeping into the waking world via the red lyrium and Corypheus. But, even if Elgar'nan was beyond her reach, there was one who was not. And he would have to do.
"What do you plan to do about Corypheus?" Mythal asked Fen'Harel.
"It is not him, but his dragon that is a concern at the moment. So long as it lives, so long as there are grey wardens to possess, he cannot be killed."
Mythal's smile was full of teeth. "I know how to handle the dragon."
The gaze Fen'Harel turned on her was wary, "why would you choose to help now?"
Mythal waved a hand at the door that stood between them and all that remained of Elgar'nan and Andruil. "My desire for revenge has not faded, simply with the knowledge that my prey is long dead. Corypheus is corrupted with the magics of this place, magics suffused with the essence of the Pantheon. Including Elgar'nan. If I cannot kill my husband, Corypheus will have to do."
Fen'Harel nodded, and held out his hand once again. "It is time," he told her.
Mythal placed her hand in his, and closed her eyes as his hand settled down over them. His power rose around them, and they were swept away.