"Maybe we should turn back."
It starts off a normal day. The forest is silent, perhaps unnervingly so, but the two elves on their hunt do not let it distract them for long. They spend their morning chatting idly, discussing their unfair punishments from brawling and taking bets on the animals they'll catch for the evening meal.
The forest is pretty in the midday sun; the sun hits the forest floor in patches through the thick trees, and Mahariel feels she can dance through the forest all day without a care in the world. There's no sound except for the chirping of the birds and the snapping of twigs beneath their feet. When Tamlen hears the heavy footfalls of loutish humans fleeing in their direction, they're tempted to ignore it.
It is with a cocky smile and a motion of his head that Tamlen leads the way to the humans, and Mahariel follows warily but determined with her bow drawn and arrow nocked.
It starts off as a normal day.
It doesn't end that way.
"Maybe we should turn back?" Mahariel hovers at the edge of the ruin, uncertain and more than a little bit frightened. Tamlen turns to her with a smile that's all bravado, hiding the dread that is slowly rising from the pit of his stomach.
"Come on, how bad could it be?" His eyes glint in the dim light of the entrance, and Mahariel can see the fear hidden in the depths. He is nervous, as is she, and she almost wants to beg him to leave.
"Famous last words, Lethallin." Mahariel lags behind him as he leads the way inside; she holds on precariously to the vines to steady herself. Tamlen throws her a grin when he spots what she is doing, but otherwise doesn't comment on it.
"Say, how did you end up coming out here with me, anyway? It's been making me curious all day; weren't you supposed to be helping master Ilen with his carving today?" Tamlen helps her down the steep part of the decline, his hand wrapped tightly around her wrist to ensure she does not fall, and watches her face carefully as she responds.
"I wanted to spend the day with you." She speaks after a moment, and as the words leave her lips her eyes lift up to meet his. He stares at her intensly, the weight of her words tugging at his heart strings. He becomes almost overwhelmed with the urge to tell her how he feels, to finally get it out in the open and to pray she feels the same way. But the moment breaks when Mahariel loses her footing and almost tumbles to the ground, and Tamlen has to focus more on keeping her steady and less on emotional revelations.
They stand before the mirror with identical looks of wonder on their faces, though inside they both experience completely different sensations. Mahariel is feeling sick with dread and fear; the mirror looks ominous enough in the dark ruin, and Mahariel cannot help but feel like the mirror is watching them as they move around the room. As Tamlen circles it once, he feels a massive sense of wonder and triumph; there's barely a scratch on the mirror, and though elvish is inscribed around the edges he has a feeling that it would have been valuable enough without it. There's a pull to it, something drawing him in and dragging him unwillingly towards it. He's determined to find a way to take it back to the clan, and he meets Mahariel back at the steps with the intent written clearly on his face.
Mahariel notices it, and gives a furious shake of her head.
"No. Look at it, it looks wrong. It feels wrong Tamlen, let's just leave it alone."
"What are you talking about? It's full of value, you can tell that just by looking at it! Who knows what secrets of our past it holds!" Tamlen knows he sounds absolutely starstruck with the mirror, and slowly he starts to make his way up the steps towards it. Mahariel watches him as she would a dangerous predator, struck with fear for herself and her closest friend. There's an almost glazed look to his eyes that scares her, as though he does not even know what he says.
"Tamlen, please. We can go back to the clan and tell Marethari about it, then return when there are more of us. Please." She wipes her bloodied hands on her armour skirt –the fight with the bereskarn had been particularly vicious- and steps towards Tamlen in hope of dragging him out the ruin herself.
"I'm just going to examine it, nothing more." He steps closer, ignoring her pleas completely; Mahariel almost launches herself towards him and the mirror.
"Tamlen!" She grabs his outstretched arm and uses it to pull herself between him and the mirror. His reverie breaks, though his hard gaze locks on her instead. She stares back, just as frozen, and twice as unsure what to do now that she has stopped him. Mahariel notices nothing else besides his eyes staring into her own with something akin to shock, and the closeness of his face to hers.
Whichever one of them starts the kiss, Tamlen will never recall. All he will remember is that one moment he is staring at her, taking in the features of her face and the fear for him in her eyes, and the next he is kissing her hard. It's a kiss of relief and unchained love, the pouring out of his feelings in the one gesture he is sure she cannot mistake. Her lips are moving quickly against his own, and one hand rests at the back of his neck in order to deepen a kiss that they both have waited far too long to initiate.
Unconsciously, Tamlen pushes her back against the mirror as he cups her face in his hands. The effect is almost immediate. He feels, rather than sees, the moment her fingertips of her free hand touch the smooth glass of the mirror. Mahariel stiffens, her lips and body instantly unresponsive and her fingertips lightly grazing the mirror. Tamlen pulls back immediately, and feels the terror for her stab into his heart with the pain of a real dagger. Her eyes cloud over as the temperature in the room drops. The mirror surface starts to swirl, Mahariel holds back a whimper and Tamlen watches on helplessly. Skin becomes ice cold, and Tamlen finds he cannot tear her hand away from the mirror in time as the surface starts to give off heat.
Tamlen panics, unable to distract her or at least bring her back around to cognizance; desperate, he wraps an arm around her waist and pulls. The mirror unleashes energy powerful enough to send them both staggering backwards and, with Mahariel in his arms, Tamlen loses his footing and falls, falls, falls down into darkness.
When he wakes, three days later, his clanmate is missing. Fenarel looks mournful, Ashalle openly sobs, and Marethari looks both terrifyingly grim and utterly relieved.
He leads the search for Mahariel, desperate and with the will of a man who realises he has nearly lost everything he holds dear. Fenarel keeps a wary eye on him, and Tamlen feels that Merrill is a fool if she thinks he does not realise she is casting stamina spells his way.
He very nearly starts a fight with the human in the ruin; he is so desperate to find Mahariel, the elven woman he loves and has seemingly lost, that the Warden's words bring to the surface a boiling fury at the very idea that Mahariel is gone. She cannot be gone; there is too much left unsaid between the two and she would never leave him alone in the world. Tamlen loves her, needs her, and yet the human insists up and down that she is gone and is willing to bet his life on it.
Taken by the darkspawn.
He refuses to believe it, and returns to camp hours later limp in the arms of the Warden. His distress is so acute, so crippling that Merrill decides to knock him into induced sleep rather than allow him to continue fighting with the Warden.
When he wakes, he weeps. He knows it should have been him that touched the mirror; his own fingertips were only inches away from the surface when Mahariel had distracted him; if she had not done so, she would be in his place and he in hers, wherever she might be.
And so Tamlen leaves for Ostagar the next day, with very few personal belongings and a hole in his heart that he knows can never be filled.
A/N: Okay, so I've brought this back! Rewritten extensively from the files on my laptop, mind you, but it's back. It's the first time I've really tried to write in this style, so hopefully it's gone okay, and I may rewrite the later chapters like this. This will, however, be a lot shorter than it was originally planned to be; rather than just write up the entire game with Tamlen as the Warden, I'll just do several chapters detailing the most important parts of the game!
Better get back to my essay now :(