Surrender

Part Two

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"I will not kill a child."

The room fell silent, the heated argument still ringing in his ears, but Lyna's quiet refusal seemed louder than any of the other passionate opinions clamoring to be heard. She wasn't angry, instead standing casually with her arms crossed loosely beneath her breasts. Yet, Alistair saw the glint in her eyes, the strong set to her shoulders, like she was digging her heels into stone, and got the impression she wasn't going to be persuaded to change her mind about this.

He wished he could feel the same level of conviction. His heart was torn in half, sick to his soul at the idea of hurting a little boy. But, Connor wasn't a little boy anymore… he was an abomination…

He heard his own unspoken doubts voiced by Sten, the qunari's low-pitched objection echoing a now-familiar disgust at Lyna's foolishness. She met the terrifying man's glare without flinching, her voice just as soft—and just as firm—as before. "I will not kill a child."

Alistair couldn't deny that he breathed a little easier with the decision out of his hands, even if her refusal to budge ended up damning them all. He certainly wasn't willing to shoulder the burden of murdering an innocent, and he wouldn't pressure her to do it, either.

When the blood mage she had released, despite Alistair's protests, brought up his solution, Alistair was much more inclined to speak up. Bringing more evil down on them certainly wasn't going to help.

As it turned out, however, he needn't have bothered. Lyna was quiet for a moment before she shook her head, the charms in her hair clinking softly together like music in the stillness.

"No. I would not resort to blood magic unless absolutely necessary. Even among my people, we are warned of the dangers of the forbidden powers." She turned to Alistair. "What of your mages? Surely they have a supply of this… lyrium… that the boy speaks of. Would they not help, were we to ask?"

"That is an excellent point," he said, surprised that no one else had thought of it. Being trapped in this room, seeing the horrors of untrained magic unleashed all around them—he didn't think any of them were thinking very clearly. "The Circle Tower isn't far from here. It's only a day's journey across the lake."

"What about Connor? He will not stay passive forever!" Isolde's whimper screeched across his nerves like nails on a slate. He had a fleeting, unkind thought that Eamon's coma might be nothing more than a desperate attempt to escape her constant whining.

He immediately felt guilty for even having such thoughts about such a dire situation. Morrigan must have been rubbing off on him.

Lyna gave the arlessa a long, searching look. "It is the only option left to us. A moment ago, you were prepared to die. Why this sudden fear?"

"The risk to Connor is too much, to just leave him alone here. Do the ritual. Save him now."

Lyna raised an eyebrow, her crossed arms tightening into something marginally more aggressive. "I will request that Morrigan remain here, to keep watch over the child and ensure that he does not harm anyone else. The blood magic ritual is far too dangerous. Such magics tend to draw on the energies around them, and those within this stone tent are distressed enough to make such a working unstable, I believe." She glanced at Morrigan, who nodded, almost imperceptibly, in confirmation. "You see? It would accomplish nothing, except to make you feel you have redeemed your past actions, when you have done nothing of the sort."

Teagan looked shocked. Isolde looked outraged. Alistair decided that somewhere along the line, his sense of humor must have slipped into something truly perverse, because he had to cough to hide his smile.

…

The long, winding stairway that led to the entrance of the Circle Tower might have seemed peaceful and utterly dull to anyone else climbing it, but to Alistair's Templar-trained senses, the journey to the main floor was… unsettling. Everything was too quiet, too still, leaving behind a hollow void where the tingle of magic should have existed. The unnatural sense of foreboding grew heavier with each step, until he was outright jittery, looking around for any sign of life, or at least some clues as to what was making him so nervous.

Something was very, very wrong here.

Lyna was also glancing around, but without any kind of magical training, she didn't feel the same sense of imbalance that enveloped him. Her focus was on another matter entirely. "The mages? Why are they here?"

"They grow up here," he said, still distracted in his concentration on the floors above. Over the past few days, he had Lyna had not exactly become friends, but she spoke to him more than she had before, and seemed to at least regard him as at least marginally useful. She treated him as a kind of constant source of information for the aspects of Ferelden she was unfamiliar with, like a walking book of lore—easily accessible, and just as easily set aside when she didn't need it. He had become so used to answering her many questions, he barely had to think about it anymore. "They're brought here as children. It's their home."

"But I don't understand. Why are they caged like this?"

That got his attention. He glanced sharply in her direction, but she was honestly curious, her eyes free of accusation or judgment. Accustomed to a life where she could pack up and move away from any location that didn't suit her or her clan, she genuinely didn't understand the reasoning behind something her people would perceive as cruelty.

Alistair found himself at a loss. In seeing Lyna, a woman as wild as nature itself and yet wholly honest, all of the reasons the Chantry had driven into his head suddenly seemed inadequate and… well, stupid.

He tried, anyway. "It's not a cage. It's just… mages are dangerous, even if they don't mean to be. It's safer for them this way. I doubt many of them would leave, even given the opportunity. It's all they know. You saw what happened with Connor."

"The woman back at the castle did this because she feared sending him to this place."

"Yeees…"

Lyna considered that before she extended her arm, revealing a row of white, dotted scars on the inside of her elbow. She gave him a wry smile. "A fox accidentally stumbled into a snare I had set one night while hunting. When I tried to free the poor thing, it bit me." She sighed, looking up at the high, magnificent walls and towering statues with sadness in her eyes. "All living things are dangerous while they thrash about, trying to find freedom."

…

"The elder mage does not approve of me."

Alistair wasn't sure why Lyna was surprised by this, or why it bothered her—or why she was coming to him about it, for that matter. He barely understood the way women thought on a good day, let alone while he was creeping along a destroyed hallway, watching for abominations. He glanced down at her, trying to figure out her mood before he answered. Her eyebrows were drawn together, her mouth set in what could only be described as a pout.

It was… kind of adorable, actually.

"Well, in her defense, you did know her for all of about thirty seconds before you threatened to cut out her tongue."

"She was disrespectful."

"Yes, she demanded your name. The old hussy."

She crossed her arms, her pout growing more pronounced as she watched Leliana and Wynne walking ahead of them, absorbed in quiet conversation. Alistair had to fight to keep from smiling. He doubted Lyna would have appreciated it.

"I have already given my apologies," she said. He could swear she was almost sulking. "She simply startled me. What does she anticipate will happen when she demands answers, and offers naught in return but threats?"

Now he did smile. "Give her time. If I can get used to your knee-jerk reactions, you have a fighting chance that Wynne can, as well."

A noise drifting into the hall from a room up ahead stopped them both in their tracks. Alistair listened as closely as he was able, but he could make out nothing except a low mutter of sound that was impossible to distinguish. Lyna, however, pulled at his arm to bring him down to her height, leaning over to whisper in his ear. "Humans. Heavy footsteps. They sound as though they are fully armored."

"Templars." Alistair adjusted the shield on his arm and hissed a warning to the two women walking ahead of them, waving them back over. "They might be possessed. Could you tell how many there were?"

"At least four. We hold the element of surprise."

He shook his head. "Too dangerous. The doorway provides them with the opportunity to pick us off one at a time." He thought for a moment. "I can't move up without them hearing me. But if you sneak ahead, you could try to draw them out to us. Just make sure you get behind me as quickly as possible."

Lyna tilted her head, her eyes narrowed in confusion. "You wish me to lure them out here? How?"

Alistair had to bite his tongue to keep from laughing and giving them away. "Lyna, I have full confidence in you. There is no one you can't piss off."

…

He had been trying very hard for the last hour not to look at Lyna, too aware of how often her dark eyes wandered his way, filled with silent wondering. He didn't know what she had seen in the Fade with the others, and didn't particularly care. He only knew when she had appeared to drag him away from the secret dream that had haunted him most of his life, she had definitely seen too much. The knowledge that he had been tricked by a demon was humiliating enough without his emotionally inconsistent companion being witness to it. The entire experience was just uncomfortable, and so he fell back on his old defense of pretending it didn't happen and hoping it would go away.

It didn't work.

He really needed a new defense.

"That woman, in your vision. She was…"

"No one important."

Lyna turned to say something, but quickly looked away from whatever expression he wore, biting her lip. She was quiet for a long time. Alistair got the sudden, uncomfortable impression that he may have hurt her feelings with his curtness. It also occurred to him, belatedly, that it was probably the very first time she had ever asked him anything about himself. Perfect. He had been the one to suggest an attempt at friendship, and now he owed her his life, as well.

But, hey, what's a little antagonism between friends?

Ass.

She spoke before he could apologize, making him feel even worse with her calm consideration. "If you do not wish to speak to me about it, you can simply say so. I would understand. I did not intend to pry into something so private."

He sighed, running a hand over his face, and idly wished one of the demons that had been plaguing them all day might pop up out of the ground when the distraction might actually be of some use to him. "She's my sister," he said at last. "Half-sister. I tracked her down several years ago. I wanted to find family. She didn't. She just wanted money, and was furious when I didn't have any to give her. I haven't spoken to her since."

Again, she was quiet, no doubt remembering a very different scene than the one he had just described. Alistair held his breath, waiting for the flood of questions that was sure to follow, given her avid curiosity and penchant for speaking whatever came to mind. But the interrogation didn't come. Instead, Lyna offered him a small smile, lifting her shoulder in a shrug. "Perhaps since she is so content wallow in misery, it is better that you left her to it. I do not think you could have provided her with any."

Alistair didn't know how to respond to that.

…

The pandemonium of spells and screams died away, leaving only an empty, ominous silence ringing all around him, interrupted only by the rushing sound of his heartbeat in his ears and the heavy, labored breathing coming from his chest. The residue of a hundred different magics bombarding his Templar senses all at once left him dazed, tingling along his skin like a light sunburn. Alistair shook his head, trying to regain some amount of control, and fought back a wave of nausea as a result.

"Alistair, are you all right?" Leliana seemed to have materialized beside him, her eyes filled with concern. He was on his hands and knees with no clear memory of how he got there. "Oh! You're hurt!"

He glanced down and saw the blood staining his shirtsleeve. So he was. He lifted his arm experimentally, but felt only a dull stinging in his bicep. "It's not bad." He struggled to get up, aware of Leliana trying to stop him.

"Please, hold still. I saw you collapse after you killed Uldred. Did he do something to you?"

His mind came hurtling back, the memory of the blast of energy that had rendered him all but helpless as the gargantuan abomination leered down at him. Alistair was sure he was done for, until without warning, the monster reared back, providing a clear shot to the heart, a pair of arrows embedded in the base of Uldred's spine…

"Where's Lyna?" He glanced frantically about, but only saw Wynne, tending to Irving. Leliana looked horrified, spinning around to check the pile of bodies behind them. Together they began to search through the wreckage.

He finally found her, buried beneath the remains of what had once been Uldred. She was conscious, but only barely, her eyes smoldering in pain. He knelt down next to her, relieved to see that aside from what was sure to be a broken rib or two and a good blow to the head, she hadn't been hurt too badly. "Can you move at all?"

She looked up at him with glossy eyes. "I believe… I can walk…"

"Not worth it." He gingerly slipped his arms beneath her and lifted her as carefully as he could, wincing when she whimpered in pain. "It's okay—I've got you."

"Emma sulevin," she whispered, smiling faintly at his confused look. "'I know.'"