Long ago Wynne had chosen the path of spirit healing over all the others. At heart she was a protector, and she felt somehow drawn to the healing arts over the destructive ones that Morrigan favored. It wasn't doing her any good now. She was losing them and she knew it. Morrigan and Leliana had already fallen, taken from behind by a Hurlock berserker who had managed to get behind the party without them realizing it. Wynne herself would have gone down too if it weren't for the timely intervention of Sten's huge warblade as it was making its way towards her.
Wynne did her best to shake off the fear of the close call and ignore Sten finishing off the Hurlock in order to concentrate on the task at hand. Alistair, Aedan, and Dog were trying to take on the angriest ogre they had ever faced. Right now the ogre had picked up Alistair and was thrashing him around like a ragdoll. It was all she could do to continue to channel enough energy into Alistair to keep his rib cage from collapsing under the crushing force of its grip. Aedan and his dog were doing a very good job of harassing the ogre, and by the look of the quick cuts Aedan had made in succession on the ogre's stomach it looked like they would succeed in getting it to drop Alistair at any moment. Dog was doing a number on his hamstring, too. But it hadn't let go of Alistair yet, and she was slipping.
Suddenly, Wynne heard Sten grunt in pain. She risked a look over her shoulder, and what she saw made her blood run cold for the second time in as many seconds. Sten had been tackled by three darkspawn, and they were systematically cutting away his armor to get at the soft flesh underneath. He had managed to squash the head of the fourth, but it was clear he wasn't going to last more than another moment or two, which would leave her alone and surrounded. She had to make a choice or die.
She chose to live. Only by sheer chance was Alistair not crushed immediately when she moved to bolster Sten instead, as the ogre decided it had had enough of trying to squash the gleaming knight in vain, and threw Alistair thirty feet through the air like a discarded bone before kicking the Mabari just as far in the other direction. Cursing herself for having to choose among which of her friends would die, Wynne couldn't stop herself from glancing at Alistair and Dog, each sprawled out on the ground. Neither of them were moving.
After all the energy she had expended in such a short time to keep Alistair from perishing, Wynne could keep Sten alive, but not conscious. He went limp, and the three Darkspawn turned to her.
Aedan's entire party lay dying around him, scattered among the bodies of the score of Darkspawn they had killed together, and he was exhausted to the point where he could no longer draw breath, let alone keep his blades moving. But the ogre he was fighting just wouldn't die, and it looked like Wynne was all alone with a trio of Darkspawn. He was doing his best to hold it together, and for the most part was managing to broadcast a fairly calm exterior.
Inside, he was panicking.
He struggled to stay focused on what was going on in front of him. Wynne probably had seconds to live if he couldn't get to her, but he couldn't help her until this ogre was dealt with, and he couldn't do either of those things if he was killed the next time the ogre swung his club. He dodged left and rolled hard, slicing out the right calf of the ogre as he came up. It was a clean hit, but the ogre still didn't go down. It didn't help that even its calf was still thicker than his dagger was long. The ogre did bellow in pain, but it only raised its club again to strike. Aedan had gambled his footing on the ogre going down from that cut, was now off balance, and was not going to be able to dodge the next strike. It was coming down on his head, hard, and there was nothing he could do about it.
Wynne made one final draw on untapped energy she didn't know she had left, and summoned a spiritual cage to hold the first of the remaining three Darkspawn before the other two were on her. She parried the first sword strike with her staff, thanking the Maker she hadn't lost her fingers in the process, and blasted his partner ten feet backwards with a stonefist spell in riposte. She'd bought herself ten, maybe twenty seconds before she would be surrounded again, but that still left her in single combat with a very large Hurlock berserker. It had halted its attacks on for an instant or two to evaluate his foe after both his companions were taken out of the fight. Apparently, it didn't relish being in single combat with a mage either. After a second or two, however, it changed its footwork and came back in at her.
Wynne was completely out of her depth in hand to hand fighting, and had only one offensive option left: a lightning bolt. It was a waste to use it on a single foe, as she couldn't lessen the energy she had to expend to form the spell that could easily down an entire squad of enemies, but she had no choice. She summoned, again, all the reserves she had left, and the hair on everyone within fifty yards stood up as the air began to crackle. The bolt burst forth from her staff, ionizing the air between her and her target, and it too was thrown back; the only movement it made when it landed was to twitch and shake. Unfortunately, the one she had blasted with the stone fist was now getting up, and the other was beginning to realize that if it kept at it it could eventually shatter the spiritual cage holding it back.
This time, Wynne really was out of options, and could do nothing more than risk losing consciousness in order to channel enough energy into herself to cast one last spell to try to hold off the wounds she was about to receive long enough for Aedan to get to her.
At the last second, rather than try in vain to dodge again, which from this position would most likely dislocate his knee, or at least sprain his ankle, Aedan risked a high cross-parry and did his best to absorb the impact with his legs as the club came crashing down. The impact nearly broke his blades, and, judging by the cracking sound and white hot agony, did break his left arm. Truly desperate now, Aedan focused everything he had on getting his footing fixed so he wouldn't be there when the next blow hit. He was not going to be able to block another one.
By the Maker's grace, he was able to lean almost out of the way of the follow on strike, and he only caught the tip of one of the spikes on his shoulder. Excruciating, fiery pain shot down his already ruined arm, and he knew he was a dead man. He put everything into his next movement, and bellowing a war cry he had not known he was capable of producing, he dove into the attack.
And suddenly, something inside him…. clicked. He felt nothing now but the movement of his blades and his footwork, as he dodged in and out of the ogre's reach, ducking low and cutting high to sever the ogre's bicep. With a double sweep that felt like it would break his bad arm clean off, he managed to eviscerate the ogre, who now clutched at his belly with the remaining arm it could still control, but in his trance he did not even register the splat of the blood and ichor on his body or the putrid stench of its entrails. In fact, he didn't register anything at all, any more. Not the pain in his arm, his shoulder, his legs, or even the fact that all of his friends might already be dead. He was nothing but the movement of his blades, a whirling cyclone of pointed death, and he wasn't stopping until the last Darkspawn within sight was doing nothing more than leaking its polluting blood into the already blighted earth.
The darkspawn she had stone fisted was now up close with her, and she knew its partner would shatter her cage at any moment. She had no magic left to put between herself and the monsters, and she was not a trained fighter. She blocked clumsily with her staff, but succeeded only in having it knocked from her hands. With not even that piece of wood to put between herself and her foes now, she threw up her hands in a futile gesture of protection as it ran her through with its blade. Wynne collapsed to the ground, her vision growing dark, as the darkspawn moved on to deal with Aedan.
He practically climbed his way up the ogre's body in order to slit its throat before it even hit the ground as it finally collapsed from the wounds it had received. That done, he realized, in some vague way, that there was something else left to do. He heard a woman screaming, but that wasn't what concerned him right now. What was it? The shattering of Wynne's spiritual cage finally brought him back to the present. He still didn't know what that annoying, high-pitched yelling was all about (in his dreamlike state, he had forgotten Wynne completely), but he had noticed that there were still Darkspawn that breathed.
Wynne had just enough left in her to keep herself from expiring on the field right there, but it wasn't enough to let her do anything more than watch impotently as Aedan moved to fight alone. She briefly considered giving up, but she was a stubborn woman, and even if she could no longer influence this fight, she was unwilling to just die peacefully. Even if that meant she'd be fully conscious a minute from now when, probably finished with Aedan, the Darkspawn would finish her off. Maker's will, may it only be quick.
Aedan felt wonderful. Not a trace of pain remained; his heart thundering in his chest and his pulse pounding in his ears had never made him feel more alive. Each breath felt like being born, over and over again. His legs moved on their own, as if he didn't even have to power them with his own energy, and he closed the remaining few feet to his last two foes effortlessly. The ease with which he moved caught the first one off guard, and, his timing perfect, his momentum carried his blades into its neck and clear through to the other side, decapitating it easily. The last darkspawn finally managed to smash its way out of its cage to face him, but he was ready for it. With a feral grin, he dove into combat with the last foe.
She had never seen Aedan move like this before. He was a skilled fighter, a killer even, but he had never seemed to… enjoy the act this much that she could remember. She had never seen him like this. He looked, well, possessed. Like some other power was moving through him, accelerating him to inhuman speeds, and pushing him past human limits of pain tolerance and physical endurance. She had heard his bones crack when he tried to block that blow even from here, and yet he showed no evidence that he was damaged at all, or even in pain. She watched in awe as he executed a twelve-cut combination followed by a leg sweep on the last combatant, and closed her eyes when he cut its throat with a cross rip. She opened them again a moment later, afraid what she might see. She saw him standing there, looking at nothing, breathing heavily. She tried to speak his name.
"Aedan?" He didn't seem to notice her, so she tried again, this time with more force: "Aedan! Aedan, listen to me! It's over." She struggled to her hands and knees, and began to crawl towards him. She had to bring him out of this, or, well, she didn't know what. But every instinct told her that this wasn't natural and that he needed her help. She eventually was able to stand, and walked carefully over to him, clutching an arm to her stomach wound. He was still panting, and didn't appear to even see her. Cautiously, she reached out and touched his arm. "Aedan? Are you in there?"
He jerked, violently, and for an instant she thought he was going to run her through too, but when she looked into his eyes, she saw a surprised glimmer of recognition, and he began to come out of it.
"What, where am I? Are we dead? Oh, Maker, what happened?" He looked around in panic, as if he had woken from a nightmare to realize he'd been sleepwalking. She suspected that he might have been, in a sense. He began looking around wildly until he found Morrigan, lying unconscious and lifeless, possibly dead. He ran to her, still ignoring Wynne. He was relieved to find that she was still bleeding. Bleeding badly, but bleeding. That meant that her heart was still beating, at least for now. Finally acknowledging Wynne, the look of desperation in his eyes said it all. Wynne refocused herself for a moment, and then nodded in amazement to Aedan. The Witch was going to live.
Hours later, Wynne twitched her lips in deep thought. She had been thinking all day about what had happened that morning, and when they made camp she decided to talk to Aedan once she could catch him alone. It took some time, as he stayed with Morrigan until late that night. She had apparently gotten over her need to protect her reputation as a heartless shrew after she realized how much pain she was in, and how much Aedan seemed to want to make her comfortable. Now she was more than happy to let him attend to her every need, but even Wynne had to admit to herself that she did look genuinely grateful for his concern. She certainly wasn't faking the pain she was in, at least.
Morrigan's wounds had actually been the most severe, even compared to Wynne's own. Wynne had indeed been run through, but she'd had healing energy going to the wound even before the blade was withdrawn. Amazingly, Alistair only had a concussion, and Dog had woken up an hour after the fight, shaken himself, and seemed none the worse for wear after that. Sten woke up minutes after the fight, having apparently only passed out because the Darkspawn had cut off his air supply by sitting on him, and that blockage was removed as soon as it moved on to fight Wynne. Leliana had lost a lot of blood, but the cuts themselves were fairly simple to heal, and she would make a full recovery by morning with magical aid.
Morrigan, however, had a dislocated shoulder, a severed quad, a shattered elbow, a cracked skull, and had lost 90% of the blood in her body. She had not awoken until hours after the fight was over, and Wynne was still unsure why she had lived at all. With magic, she would of course be able to recover fully, but it might take days, or even weeks. Perhaps, she thought, it had something to do with what she needed to talk to Aedan about.
She finally caught him on his way to his own tent. She guessed he wasn't returning to sleep, but to get another blanket for Morrigan. He was probably going to sleep by her side, or, more likely, was going to sit up the entire night with her, the poor devoted fool. Wynne doubted it deep down, but she sincerely hoped that Morrigan would one day appreciate, or at least understand, just how much the Warden truly cared about her. She didn't for a moment think Morrigan would ever return it, at least not to the level he did, but she was an old woman and had learned long ago never to say never.
"Aedan, I need to talk to you about what happened this morning."
"Wynne… yes, I know, but can it wait? I need to get Morrigan another blanket." He looked anxious, and Wynne relented, but only briefly.
"Yes, you can give her the blanket first, but this is important. I mean it." She grabbed his arm and did her best to look severely dire, in a motherly way. Aedan looked at her for a moment, and, deciding that she meant it, he nodded and hurried away. He was back within five minutes.
"Ok, she is sleeping again, so I guess she doesn't really need me right now. What's wrong?"
"This morning, I saw your body broken before my eyes, and yet I saw you take on an ogre in single combat, then move thirty yards to save me from a pair of darkspawn."
"I…don't understand. Are you saying you would have preferred I had let us all die?"
"No, that isn't what I mean and you know it," she snapped. Then, apologetically: "I'm sorry, Aedan, I didn't mean to snap at you. I certainly don't wish that you'd let us all die. But at the same time, I'm worried about what happened to you that allowed you to do it. To save us, I mean."
Aedan was young, but he had enough wisdom to understand that having a favorable result did not automatically make something harmless or good. He had privately been worried a little bit by what happened too, and Wynne seemed to understand these things. He decided to listen to what she had to say.
"Aedan, I think that you unknowingly tapped into the Fade this morning, and were somehow able to draw power from it."
"I thought only Mages could do that."
"That's both correct and not. Mages have the unique ability to navigate the Fade, and yes, to draw power from it. Power both good and bad. What you did this morning could have been nothing else. Your body shouldn't have been able to get you through that fight, but you emerged from the engagement without a scratch on you, even though we both saw you nearly get smashed. I heard your bones break, Aedan." Aedan looked slightly uncomfortable, but he was trying not to show it. Still, Wynne could tell that she'd hit on something.
"I don't understand what happened with that either, Wynne. Believe me, I felt those bones break. But I couldn't feel better than I did after that fight. I felt healthier than I had in weeks, with the constant battles and elusive sleep."
"I suspect, Aedan, that you have what is known as 'Fade Affinity'. Simply put, you are not a normal man, but also not a Mage. You fall somewhere in between. You are able to draw on the power of the Fade, and obviously to navigate within it, like a Mage does, but you yourself are not a bridge like a true Mage is. If you were, I could sense it. Morrigan could too, but I don't know whether or not she would have mentioned it-"
Aedan's crossed arms and glare cut her off short.
Wynne threw her hands up in surrender. "Ok, ok, I won't go there. But my point remains. You're certainly not a Mage, but you do appear to have an affinity for the Fade. I don't know what exactly this means for you, in terms of power and vulnerability."
"Vulnerability? Hold it, you mean like how Mages have to be careful not to bridge the wrong spirit and get possessed?"
Wynne had to hand it to him, he caught on quickly. "Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. This morning you were touched by something, and I don't know whether it was good or bad."
"But I wasn't actually possessed, right? I mean, I snapped out of it once it was over, with your help." This time Aedan was unable to hide the raw terror in his eyes at the thought.
"No, you weren't. More like channeling it. You allowed it to cross over partially, and to share your body briefly, giving you additional power, endurance, and apparently some healing abilities. I suspect that that is what saved Morrigan's life. She would have died without my help hours ago, but she wouldn't have lived through those first minutes if you hadn't been there pouring life energy into her."
"It sounds to me like this must not be an evil spirit then, right? Demons don't usually do this sort of thing that I've heard, and you said yourself that not all Fade spirits are evil, right?"
"You're more right than you know about that last part, my dear," Wynne said softly, as if she were more familiar with the subject than she let on. "No, they are not all evil. And I don't think the one that took an interest in you this morning was, either. All I'm saying is that you need to be aware of this, and to be careful. But this isn't all grim news. You saw this morning that great good can come from such an ability. If you want, I can help you to understand it, possibly even to control it. If you decide you want no part of this power, I can at least show you enough to keep yourself safe and to keep it from activating if you don't want it to."
"I… thank you for your offer. I'd like some time to think about this. I certainly would like to learn enough to keep it turned off, just to keep me safe. I can decide later if I want to pursue further skill in order to control it and use it as a tool. Thank you, Wynne. I am glad that you are here with us. There is a lot in this world that I don't know how to deal with, and I really appreciate your help."
"It is not a problem at all, dear. And after all, I owe you not just my own life, but the lives of everyone I hold dear. I am more than happy to help you and your friends in any way I can. Go now, be with Morrigan. I can tell you from experience that even a cold one like her," (she ignored his glare) "can't help but feel touched if she wakes up in the middle of the night in pain and you're right there with her, already taking care of whatever she needs."
"I know you don't approve, Wynne," Aedan replied with a frown, misinterpreting Wynne's remark as sarcasm, "but I do ask that you accept how I feel about her. I don't know if she ever will, or if she is even capable of feeling the same way I do about her, but I care past the point where it would bother me if she doesn't. I care about her because I care about her. Not because I desperately hope that she cares about me back."
Even though I know you do hope just that very thing, child, I still believe what you say is true. "I do, Aedan. Whether I feel you make a mistake with her or not, it is your decision and I will support you in it. Just be careful, whatever you do."
"Thank you Wynne, I will. Goodnight." His tone was still guarded, but the temporary ire he had felt had passed, and he seemed grateful.
"Goodnight, dear," Wynne replied, and gave him a warm smile that only old women seemed to know how to master.
Both of them walked back to where they were before: Wynne to her tent, and Aedan to Morrigan's. Both had much to think on.