AN: This fanfic makes no claims of accurate characterization of game personae or portrayal of game events. Dragon Age II and all characters except Iain are owned by BioWare. Iain is on loan... kind of. Where direct quotations are used in place of paraphrases or original dialogue, the intent is to be as faithful as possible to the original work. In no way should the inclusion of direct quotations be construed as an attempt to claim credit for the work and talent of another. Later chapters will feature exclusively original dialogue, but I thought it was important to take less liberties with the early material.
9:31 Dragon, 3 Guardian (pre-dawn): Gamlen's hovel, Lowtown
Even Kirkwall held its breath as we closed in on the Chantry. While streets would not usually have been as crowded as they were during the day, we should have passed a few late-working laborers, or at the very least, revelers, harlots, and thugs. Instead, we saw no one, not even a guard.
Anders was leaning against a wall outside the Chantry. The torchlight cast eerie shadows on his face, making him look otherworldly.
"I saw Karl go inside a few minutes ago," he said as soon as he saw us. "No templars so far. Are you ready?"
"Let's go."
"Alright," he said. "I'll handle the talking. You watch for templars."
All I could do was shrug and follow him into the Chantry. How much talking would he have to do? Karl did know why he was here. If he had reservations about leaving the confines of the Circle, he could have declined Anders's invitation.
Something did make me uneasy, though. If the templars locked mages in their cells, how had Karl arranged to leave the Gallows? Were mages allowed midnight excursions into Hightown to visit the Chantry? Unsupervised? Also, the Chantry was supposed to be closed at night, yet there were no locks on the door. Were the Sisters and Mothers so fearless? Even if they cared nothing for their own safety, the plate and furnishings within these walls were worth thousands. And why was the place so well lit? The walls were festooned with highly flammable tapestries, but light blazed from every sconce and from clusters of fat candles at the base of every pillar. Never mind the considerable risk of fire, was the Maker so generous that His servants could burn money on lighting that no one would need? Alarms rang in my head, but I knew not what to make of them.
In Kirkwall, unlike Ferelden, the clergy lived in the temples. They had comfortably furnished apartments set up on the upper tier, complete with beds, desks, dining areas, everything that would be required to make the place feel homey. As homey as a palatial stone hall under the oversight of an enormous bronze statue of the Maker could possibly feel, that is. Tonight, apparently, the staff in its entirety was spending the night elsewhere. All we found was Karl.
Even from the back, he was older than I thought he would be. I expected a youth, or at most, a mage Anders's own age. Someone young enough to make a fresh start somewhere else. Well, under desperate enough circumstances, I suppose people of any age can flee one life and begin another. My mother had done it. In any case, I did not expect the slightly bowed shoulders and iron-grey head of the man standing with his back to us.
"Anders, I know you too well," the man said, his voice calm and heavy, "I knew you would never give up."
"What's wrong?" Anders asked, taking a step toward Karl. "Why are you talking like -"
Karl turned to face us. Anders and I both recoiled at the sunburst-brand on his forehead. Lyrium. Karl was Tranquil.
"I was too rebellious," he said. "Like you. The templars knew that I had to be... made an example of."
"No!" Anders gasped.
"How else will mages ever master themselves?" Karl asked. "You'll understand, Anders. As soon as the templars teach you to control yourself."
Karl raised his head, projecting his voice beyond us... behind us. Half a dozen templars stood there, their weapons drawn.
"This is the apostate." It was Anders's death knell, and mine, unless we could escape.
"NO!" Anders boomed. His voice. It was deeper, like the voice we heard in his clinic, when first he addressed us. Something was happening to him. He collapsed, covering most of his face with his hands. Cracks appeared on his skin, and blue light gleamed through. The rest of his body was veiled with a kind of black aura that rose from him like smoke. He leapt to his feet and raised his hand to defy the templars. Magic sprang from his palm and from his eyes as rays of piercing blue light. The templars retreated from him... and attacked the rest of us!
Carver hurled himself at the nearest templar, screaming challenges at the templars even as he berated me for being so foolish. His heavy sword bit deep. Aveline wasted no breath on reprimands. She saved all her considerable strength for what she did best: bashing her way through everything that stood before her. Her blade served mostly to get her opponent's attention. Few who got in front of her shield lived to tell of it. Mostly, that was because her enemies were so busy avoiding her blows that they never saw Carver swooping in on them, or Varric and I targeting them from a distance, but the job got done. This time, I was too close to avoid melee entirely. The templars had closed in on us before we even knew they were there. Varric was able to break free and retreat to a safe firing distance, but I was already in the thick of it. I fought hard. It was enough. After a short, frantic battle, it was all over.
"I - Anders, what did you do?" Karl's incredulous, emotion-laden voice cut through the silence that followed the last templar's collapse. I turned to face him, not believing my own ears. "It's like you brought a piece of the Fade into this world! I had already forgotten what that feels like."
"I thought the Tranquil were cut off from the Fade forever," I stammered.
"It's like the Fade itself is inside Anders," Karl marveled, "burning like a sun."
He raised his eyes to Anders, pleading.
"Please! Kill me before I forget again! I don't know how you brought it back, but it's fading."
"Karl, no!" Anders protested. Karl was asking for the coup, and Anders knew it.
"Maybe we can find a cure," I ventured. After all, if Anders did have the Fade inside him, maybe he could transfer some to Karl, somehow.
"Can you cure a beheading?" Anders snapped. "The dreams of Tranquil mages are severed. There is nothing left of them to fix."
All evidence to the contrary, I thought, but said nothing. If there was something in Anders that could restore Karl's shattered mind even for a moment, I would have thought it worth pursuing, but Anders seemed to disagree. As host to whatever it was making Karl see colors again, figuratively speaking, Anders had the final vote. If he thought it was hopeless, who was I to contradict him? And maybe he was right. If I were Karl, would I want to exist as a statue, tormented by fleeting bouts of lucidity? No, better to end it now.
"I would rather die a mage than live as a templar puppet," Karl begged.
"I would feel the same," I agreed reluctantly. "Help him."
"I got here too late," Anders lamented. "I'm sorry, Karl. I'm so sorry."
"Now! It's fading!" Karl's voice was anguished, but when he looked up, his expression was still once more. Whatever made Karl human was gone. "Why do you look at me like that?"
I passed Anders my knife.
"Goodbye," Anders said flatly. A moment later, Karl was dead. Or what was left of him.
They say that souls pass through the Fade and return to the Maker when the bodies that contain them die. What happens to the soul of a Tranquil mage? With the Fade cut off, does it remain bound to the husk that remains, caged inside a rotting corpse for all eternity? Or are the souls of the Tranquil already free? Does the brand only keep the body from realizing that it's dead? Andraste help me, I hope I never find the answer to these questions.
"We should leave before more templars come," Anders said, interrupting my dark thoughts.
We walked back to Anders's clinic in silence. I could feel Carver's disapproval like a cold draft across the back of my neck, but if he was planning to argue with me about aything, it would have to wait. Varric said nothing, either. He simply walked quietly between Anders and me, as if shielding me with his magic-resistant dwarfiness from whatever fell powers Anders possessed. Aveline seemed content to watch and wait.
The Undercity was never deserted. People always slept in doorways or prowled the darkened passages, muttering to themselves, but no one bothered us. When we reached the wooden door to his clinic, Anders turned the key in the useless iron lock and pushed the door open.
"You'll have questions," he sighed as a spark leapt from his fingertip to the wick of a lamp. He set the lamp down on an up-ended crate and waited for someone to start talking.
"That wasn't normal magic you just did, was it?" I asked. At the time, I thought it a stupid question. For all I knew, it might have been normal magic. There were whole schools of magic I knew nothing about. Hexes, for example.
"I... "Anders began, but he did not get far. "This is hard to explain. When I was in Amaranthine, I met a spirit of Justice who was trapped outside the Fade. We became friends. And he recognized the injustice that mages in Thedas face every day."
Aha. Maybe that was not such an inane question, after all. It sounded as if Anders should refer to himself in the plural.
"This spirit seems like a useful friend to have," I said diplomatically. The Chantry had very precise opinions on spirits possessing mages, but this was no time to be dogmatic. Besides, the Chantry said a great many things, especially in condemnation of mages. They were bound to be wrong about some of them. I already knew that Spirit Healers relied on beneficial Fade spirits to augment their healing powers. If Anders allowed one of them to get too close, that was probably unfortunate for Anders, but not the apocalypse that the Chantry predicted.
"He was far better to me than I have been to him," Anders explained. "To live outside the Fade, he needed a host. I offered to help him. We were going to bring justice to ever child ripped away from his mother to be sent to the Circle. But... I guess I had too much anger. Once he was inside me, he... changed."
Anders spoke as if he were recounting the death of a brother. Whatever happened between Anders and his spirit friend, neither one of them seemed to have emerged undamaged.
"This is obviously difficult for you," I said sympathetically.
"Difficult for him!" Carver interjected. "We'll be hunted for sure, now!"
I glared at my brother in an attempt to silence him, but that never worked. There was no reason to hope that it would this time. To my surprise, it did. He grunted at me, but said nothing else. I could feel Aveline's disapproval like a wet cloak across my back, but I could live with that. As long as I helped her rein in outlaws when she asked me to, she would not hold it against me if I helped a mage, here and there. And as long as I didn't do anything that looked like blood magic. I doubt either Carver or Aveline would back me if I did anything that stupid. And I would not blame them.
"I thought I was helping my friend," Anders went on, his brown eyes fixed intently on my face as if Carver had never spoken at all. At this point, I do not think Anders knew there was anyone else in the room. Or even in Kirkwall. It was more than a little disturbing, having the undivided attention of a man who just might be an abomination. "He would have died, I guess, if that even means anything. And he wanted to help me. He knew what mages had suffered. But my anger... when I see templars now, things that have always outraged me, but I could never do anything about... he comes out. And he is no longer my friend Justice. He is a force of vengeance. And he has no grasp of mercy."
Why had I not sent Carver home? My brother would never understand this. I thought I did, though. For good or ill, Anders had attempted a kind deed. He sought only to help others. The experiment failed, but that did not diminsh the selflessness of the act. Condemning him now would serve no purpose... unless...
"Can anything be done to reverse the process?" I asked.
"I don't think so," Anders said. "The only way a spirit has ever been separated from a living host is by its death."
I could almost hear Carver urging that solution, but praise the Maker, he said nothing.
"The curse is of my own making," Anders said after a pause. "All I can do now is hope to control it."
I looked around uncomfortably. I saw nothing that would help me in the current circumstances, but I did notice that Anders lived in squalor. Ministering to the sick and friendless in Kirkwall was obviously not keeping body and soul together very well... no matter how many of the latter he seemed to have acquired.
"Is there anything I can do for you?" I asked.
"You're the first one I've ever told this," he said solemnly. "Thank you for not running away."
"You did the best you could," I reassured him. "None of us know the full consequences of our actions. The best we can do is hope that the purity of our intent will be enough to save us, should our choices go ill."
"My maps are yours," Anders said, his voice breaking with emotion, "as am I, should you wish to join your expedition. Until then, I will be waiting here. The door will always be open for you."
"Are you an actual idiot or do you just act like one?" Carver asked scornfully as soon as we were out of Darktown.
"Don't be hasty, Carver," Aveline said coldly. "I'm sure Iain has his reasons for wanting to placate an abomination. Was he dropped on his head as an infant, do you know?"
"I do have reasons," I answered defensively. "But you'll have to forgive me if I don't want to broadcast them across the Lowtown Bazaar. I'll just say this. Both of you, if you had gone your whole life without meeting another person like yourself who was not a blood relative, how eager would you be to betray that person when you did find him? Alright, so he's a little more than we expected, but he's no monster."
"That's right," Carver snorted, "because my best mate's got a demon for a tenant, too."
"Easy on the demon part," Varric warned, looking around. "He's just a bit... loud. And angry. And blue. Not like a demon at all."
"No, not like a demon," I said firmly. "Demons don't try to save other peoples' lives and free them from a life of slavery. Demons don't give up everything they are to make the world a better place for others -"
"Others like themselves," Carver interrupted.
"Yes, others like themselves!" I said angrily. I turned toward Aveline. "What do they call a soldier who sells out his own?"
"That's harsh," Aveline said, deflating a bit, "but you do have a point. Just be careful, Iain. We may not be... like you... but we don't want to see you get hurt. We've been through too much together for me to sit on my hands while you take risks. Like it or not, some people are more dangerous than others."
"I'll remember that, Aveline," I said... and meant it.
"You should!" Aveline harrumphed, but there was no sting in it. This was just my loyal friend Aveline, making sure that all of her chicks made it back to the nest. I could forgive her for that.
Carver would not be so easy to appease. He resented me enough already, without me rushing to the defense of a new friend. Fortunately, Carver is at his happiest when he has something to complain about. It will all be alright.
"Well, I don't know about the rest of you," Varric yawned, "but bed's starting to sound really good right now. I'll see you in the morning."
With that, we bid each other farewell and Carver and I returned home.
These maps had better be worth it. We need to get out of this hovel. Carver is sprawled across the entire middle bunk, leaving nowhere for me to sleep. It's probably intentional. I tried sleeping on the bottom bunk once, but after a late-night encounter with a rat, I will not do that again. Well, this will not be the first night (morning) I have slept with my head on the table. It will not be for long, anyway. Mother wakes early, and she will probably remind me of six chores I promised before breakfast. We need a bigger place. Or at least another bed.