Chapter 4 of 4
Maythre opened her eyes. Above her, three large metal chandeliers hanging from the ceiling were spinning frantically, making circles that made her head hurt. She closed her eyes again, taking a deep breath and then opening her eyes again. The chandeliers were still spinning, but slower and slower, until they finally came to a halt, all merging into one as she eventually regained ability to focus on her surroundings.
She was back in her room on the second floor of the keep, alive and well. Quickly she withdrew her left arm to take a look at it. Clean bandage covered her forearm, and she also felt some wrappings around her head, though she could not recall any reason why that should have been done. Zevran must have saved her, she realized. Even though she had harshly chased him away and forbidden him to return to the tower, he must have sensed something was wrong. For once she was eternally grateful that the elf hadn't listened to her orders.
She struggled to throw off the sheets and then gingerly got out of the bed. It was taking altogether too much effort, and the room was spinning wildly again, making her see double. By leaning on various bits of furniture, she slowly started to make her way towards the door, when a heavy sound of someone's footsteps stopped her.
"What are you doing, you madwoman?" it was Zevran's voice. "You have suffered a concussion and should be in bed, not moving around!"
He walked over to her and easily lifted her off the ground, carrying her back to the bed, while she struggled helplessly. "Unhand me now, I order you! I must… I must continue my work…"
"It's not going anywhere," Zevran said soothingly, wrapping her in the bed sheets again. "Especially now that there are no subjects for testing left…"
"And whose fault is that!" Maythre snapped, but then instantly regretted it. The man had just saved her life, after all. "I'm sorry. I should be thanking you instead. How did you think of coming back anyway?"
Zevran shrugged. "I just had a bad feeling for some reason. You had stayed away for very long, and when I told you it was the last prisoner… I had this thought that you might consider doing something really stupid."
Maythre glared at him. "It was a perfectly logical thing to do."
"Sure, as evidenced by the results," Zevran smirked.
"What about my research? Now that you have confined me to this bed, could I at least spend time productively?" Maythre asked.
"I anticipated this question," Zevran grinned and pointed at a nearby table, housing all Maythre's scribbling, stacked in a neat pile. "If you promise to be a good little Queen and stay in bed for the next three days, you can have it."
"How dare you," she tried glaring again, but to no avail. Then she sighed. "Fine, have it your way. It's probably pointless anyway by now, I guess I'll be forbidden to cut myself again."
"You most certainly will," her lover said sternly. He hesitated for a moment. "So… you only needed a little bit of blood for that final test sample?"
"That and a little bit more for the actual cure, but it would not be life-threatening amount," Maythre explained. "It should have been perfectly safe, really. I just… somehow got sick from watching my blood slowly trickle away in that jar… no idea why."
"And that last sample, you think it would have worked?" Zevran asked.
"There was high chance of it," she replied, then catching on. "Wait… why are you so interested all of a sudden."
Zevran started to pace at the edge of her bed. "Well… it is my fault that two of the prisoners were able to kill themselves. I figured… if it's not too much blood you need."
"No. No, I'm not doing it!"
"But I insist."
"No! It's crazy talk! I won't have any of it!"
"Please! I know how much you need this, it's eating you up inside, if we don't resolve it here and now… it will consume you entirely!"
"I don't want to do this," she sobbed. "Not to you."
"It will only be a little bit, and it won't hurt. I've probably lost more blood getting stabbed, shot and incinerated during our travels!"
"It's not the same."
"I will remain completely and utterly adamant about this, my Queen. My blood is yours to use," Zevran said gravely.
"I… I will think about it…" she managed. "Could I have my notes now, please? Also..." she wrinkled her nose a bit. "Do I smell chicken broth? I'm hungry…"
Several days passed. Previously, Maythre only had so little time to dedicate to research between her frantic lab test sessions, so it was no wonder that a few times she had missed a few details that could have helped her progress faster. Now, with nothing else to do, she could really concentrate on poking holes in some of her so far seemingly crystal clear theories. And she didn't like what she was seeing.
The problem was that the odds of this last sample she had attempted to create to be pure were twice lower than she initially predicted. Not to mention that it now turned out that five other combinations had the exact equal odds to be as good. One of the six would be the right combination she had been looking for. Now she would have only one chance to guess which one of them was the right one. She didn't really like those odds.
But there was nothing to be done about it, was there. Zevran didn't need to know about these new developments. She would just have to take advantage of his sacrifice and create one of the combinations and perhaps a little reserve to go with it. It should be good enough to buy her anything from sixty to two hundred years, if her calculations were correct.
And wasn't that good enough?
Finally, the day of the last experiment arrived. Her headaches seemed to have cleared completely, she could move about without any difficulty, and Zevran was content to allow her to continue their plan. The night before, they had made love several times, with much more passion than she normally allowed herself. On the morning, they celebrated their last day of stay in this accursed Keep with a rich breakfast, Zevran making good use of their last resources. There was no need to try to save them any longer, so some debauchery was allowed for. Then, together they carried Maythre's research notes back to the tower and started to prepare for the task ahead.
"I won't have to be strapped into that horrible thing, will I?" Zevran asked with a chuckle, pointing at the bloodletting device.
"No, of course not," Maythre replied, working with the test substances on the table, getting everything ready. The control tubes were set, filled with last of the darkspawn blood. She took one of the tubes for the sample to be prepared and carefully added the necessary amount of lyrium and ashes. Now, all that was needed was a little bit of blood.
One out of six, her chances to achieve immortality. One out of six! There was heavy thundering in her temples, blood pressure rising from the stress and excitement, her thoughts racing frantically.
One out of six.
Six out of six.
Hundred years.
Immortality.
Zevran.
One more body in my wake.
Tender feelings?
Necessity.
Lover.
Witness.
Her hand reached out and grabbed five more sample tubes, automatically starting to fill them with the required amount of lyrium and ashes.
"That's quite a lot of them," Zevran chuckled behind her back. "Should I be worried?"
"Just being careful," she said hoarsely.
Everything was in place, but she found herself frozen to the table. She didn't want to go through with this, but there was this strange, irresistible pull, forcing her towards the inevitable. Maythre knew she was damned either way. She turned around slowly to face him.
"What's wrong, why are you crying?" Zevran asked, rising from the chair. She wasn't aware of the tears running down her cheeks. Everything seemed… unreal, in trance.
"Why did you have to offer? WHY?" she shouted, words echoing strangely inside her skull. "I don't want to do this! I don't want to! But I can't stop myself! I CAN'T STOP!"
Zevran made a move towards her, but then froze. The shocked expression on his face became passive, his shoulders slumped and he heavily strode towards the bloodletting device, starting to strap himself in. Tears still gushing down her face, Maythre advanced with knife in hand.
Maythre had no recollection of anything that had happened during the day, after she had finished working on the samples. That too, had been done with her entire emotional processing capabilities shut off fully, operating on pure automatism. She had stumbled out of the tower afterwards, wandering off who knows where, and somehow coming back to partial senses late in the evening, shocked to find herself down in a cell of the keep's dungeon. Had she tried to lock herself up, she had no idea, but now she hurried back towards the Avernus' tower, where the samples awaited her examination.
The first sight that her eyes sought out was that of Zevran's body hanging limply in that horrible device. She recoiled briefly, but it seemed as even the sight of it did not register with her fractured mind fully, and she strode towards the laboratory table and started to peruse the samples. She had been right, one of them was pure. The darkspawn blood had dissolved entirely without a single trace and the liquid in the tube was perfect, healthy. She had used up all the blood to mix up generous reserves of all six combinations, knowing one of them would be the right one. Now she lovingly caressed the large flask that held her realized dream of immortality.
She poured a fifth of it into another flask, and then, without hesitation, drank it to the full. The sensation was that of liquid fire filling her veins, being remade, cleansed in some sort of righteous flame. It passed quickly though, compared to the dreadful Joining it was actually quite pleasant, it felt… right. As soon as Maythre felt back in control of her senses, she grabbed a bag and started to fill it with the remaining components and test implements, finally packing in the flask with the cure as last, having sealed it into a metal tube to make sure the precious fluid would not be lost. Perhaps she would never need to take another dose of it. But it didn't hurt to have something in reserve.
Once she was done, she went back to the keep's yard and readied her horse, strapping all belongings on the mare's wide back. Then she went back to the tower. One last thing remained. She took Avernus' and her own research notes and scattered them all around the wide hall. Then she aimed a fireball right at that awful bloodletting device, still holding the corpse of her lover. The flames spread quickly across the wooden floor, licking their way towards where she stood in the doorframe, in safety. The Tevinter machine had also caught fire by now, starting to rumble and shake dangerously. Alerted, Maythre shut the door and started running down the stone steps.
She had made it about halfway, when huge detonation upstairs made her temporarily deaf and rocked the stairs under her. She fell over, tumbling among falling rocks from the height of several yards, landing painfully with a cracking sound somewhere in her hip area. Yelping from pain, she hobbled towards the exit, opened the heavy doors and crawled out on the snowy walkway back to the main keep. The tower behind her rumbled and shook violently, rocks falling from it, one bouncing awkwardly next to her. As she twisted to avoid it, another boulder hit her square on the left shoulder, knocking her back and over the side of the walkway. Screaming, she fell.
When Maythre awoke, it was already dark. She somehow managed to drag herself out of the drift of snow and then crawled on all fours towards the yard, unable to stand, her body bloodied and broken, barely hanging on to last threads of life. It felt like an eternity until she reached the horse, patiently waiting for her in the yard. Fortunately, her mare was of the placid kind and stayed calm even as she spent a long time to pull herself atop of the gentle animal. Maythre gripped the neck of the mare and nudged it on, with as much effort as her body could muster, screaming in pain. The horse trotted off, into the darkness of snowstorm.
When Maythre opened her eyes next time, she thought that the sight before her was simply a cruel vision. Back in the Royal Palace, in her bedroom, with her husband's kind, elderly face concerned over her.
"I think she's coming to," she could hear his voice, unreal as it was. She was surely still stuck somewhere in the wilderness, injured, wandering atop her grey mare.
"She should be fine now," another voice spoke. She recognized the young elven healer, Shilla. "Just remember, my Lord, try to keep her from exerting herself in any way. What she needs is rest, and plenty of it. I will come back later. No doubt you will want to talk in private first."
There was a sound of doors being closed. Maythre simply lay there for a while, her thoughts racing. Was it true? She was alive. Her body felt… mangled, but intact and not in any great pain. But how had she ended up back here?
She tried opening her eyes again. Eamon noticed it, taking her tiny hand in his, giant in comparison. "Welcome back, my Queen," he spoke with obvious relief.
"What happened?" she managed hoarsely.
"Ah, it was a true stroke of luck. Cauthrien took some guards and was on her way back to the keep, when you didn't arrive in Denerim the day you had agreed on. One of the guards spotted your horse wandering aimlessly near the side of the road, you were hanging barely conscious around its neck. Just think… if one of Anora's loyalists had seen and recognized you first…"
"My belongings…"
"Everything has been recovered, don't you worry," Eamon gently caressed her hand.
Everything started to come back, like a flood. The experiments, the deaths, seas of blood… Zevran! Spike of horror ran through her, making her shudder.
"Are you alright?" Eamon had felt it too, it seemed.
She slowly rose in the bed, staring at the opposite wall. "I need to wash my face."
"You shouldn't be walking about much, but I suppose that little won't hurt," Eamon nodded, helping her up, but she refused his aid, pushing his hands away and slowly limping to the small side-room on her own.
"But why were you out there all alone?" Eamon asked. "I thought Zevran would look after you."
"He… had to stay behind at the Keep," Maythre said, gritting her teeth as she reached the door. "Watch over some things." She disappeared into the bathroom, turning the lock on the doors from inside.
"I see," Eamon cleared his throat. "How is he doing?"
Maythre reached down to the washing basin and gathered some water, splashing it over her face, the pleasant coolness soothing her greatly. "My dear?" she heard Eamon's voice behind the doors. "I asked about Zevran."
Maythre straightened up, looking into the mirror in front of her. Ghostly pale, gaunt face with sunken eyes stared back. "Did you hear me, Maythre dear? How's Zevran?"
"How's Zevran," she repeated in a hollow voice. "How's Zevran," then she giggled. With a sudden movement, she crashed her forehead against the mirror, shattering it. Blood trickled down her brow in a thick stream. "How's Zevran," she giggled again. "How's Zevran? HOW'S ZEVRAN?"
THE END