"So, are we dead?" Alistair asked cautiously, as she lay there on the ground of the Fade and stared up into the fake sky.
"Don't know." She said shortly. "Didn't get to stay long enough to really be sure. I think you're alive, though. You haven't started to wash out like Elissa did."
Alistair froze.
"Oh, crap, I'm sorry." She groaned. "Don't be sad. How do I make you not sad?" She brought her arms over her face to shield herself from Alistair's explosion of emotions. When no blast came, she peeked out to see him sitting quietly next to her.
She sat up and hesitantly ran fingers through his hair, hoping he found the gesture as comforting as she did.
"I don't think you're dead." She said reassuringly, and Alistair grunted in response. "I had healed up the mortal wounds you had when I took over, and I told them to get Wynne." She curled in closer to Alistair and rested her head on his shoulders. She felt so tired all of a sudden, like she was moving through wet sand.
"You look exhausted." Alistair grunted gently, letting her hand fall from his head and flop onto his back. "Are you all right?"
She gave a wan smile and attempted to wiggle her fingers. "Don't worry about me, I'm maaagic." She crooned.
Alistair gave her a skeptical look and she let her hands fall into her lap. "Honestly? That wore me out. I don't think I'll be able to help you much at all anymore." Echo looked down into her ethereal hands as if searching for meaning, but found none. "And I don't know if I can really take just hanging around in your head anymore. I can't do anything, I just have to sit there and wait. I do like helping you, but…"
"It's really boring and kind of demeaning?" Alistair suggested kindly, but sounding somewhat miffed.
"I wouldn't say boring." She grimaced, thinking of all the demons and gross things Alistair appeared to be a magnet for, "or demeaning, really. It's not like I have anything better to do with my time. It's just difficult to be imprisoned in there, not able to move, or interact with anyone. I can only talk to you, I can't even touch you."
She shrugged and glanced up at Alistair. He was worrying his lip and looking not unlike a kicked puppy.
"I don't think you really need me anymore." She clarified. "At least, not with you all the time. I can just stay here in the Fade, and I can still talk with you at night while you're here. And maybe, after I recover, I can come out with you again, if you want. But right now I need rest, and you don't really need me for an election."
Alistair's face didn't change.
"Oh, stop acting like you've been dumped by your girlfriend." She poked him in the side playfully. "I still like you. I just think you can do this on your own, that's all."
"Maybe you're right." Alistair grumbled, rubbing at the spot where she'd poked him a bit dramatically. "I can probably manage to go to the Landsmeet without you, and not make a total ass of myself."
"That's the spirit." She giggled tiredly, and then yawned.
"Do spirits even sleep?" Alistair teased, moving her into a more comfortable position.
"Shows what you know." Echo yawned, "I'll have you know I'm a champion napper. World class."
"All right, then, Champion." He poked her in the cheek with his finger, and she narrowed sleepy eyes at him. "I'll probably be gone by the time you wake up, though."
"You'll probably be King by the time I wake up, Alistair." Echo murmured, curling up and pretending she was under bright warm sunlight.
Echo lazily drifted in and out of awareness, though for how long she couldn't say. Time didn't really exist in the Fade, things either were or weren't and behaved accordingly. When she finally found the strength to stand up, Echo still felt weak and ungainly. She hobbled around awkwardly, but found no dreamers or spirits in the area.
That was odd. There were dreamers the world over, there were always a few stumbling around the Fade. And in the places dreamers couldn't appear, the spirits frequented. So this was likely an area that dreamers couldn't easily access, but why weren't the spirits here?
Unfortunately, there was no one around to answer, which was the whole problem.
"Well, fucksticks." She kicked at a fake rock, which flickered at the unexpected contact. It still came out victorious when she stumbled and ended up flopping to the ground in a highly undignified manner.
She had no idea where her thoughts—well, dreams, really—had taken her in the Fade, but it didn't look to be anywhere familiar or good. Actually, for such a visually appealing place, something about it really set her hair on end. She couldn't quite put her finger on it. There wasn't a single demon or spirit in sight or even the range that she could sense, so there was really no reason-
"Why is this area so deserted?" Echo asked herself, frowning at her surroundings. It seemed nice enough. Actually, the view was rather stunning, in a subdued sort of way. She appeared to be partly up a jagged mountain lightly spotted with small bushes and flowers she didn't recognize from her time in Ferelden. Maybe a dreamer had imagined them?
'Or maybe I'm just a second-rate botanist,' Echo allowed.
That second thing seemed more likely. She could recognize four flowers on sight, but there were probably more.
She dismissed the thought when she flexed her bare toes and realized that there was a distinctly odd sensation below them. And between them, actually.
"Is this sand?" she asked herself doubtfully, bending her knee so that she could examine the tiny, soft-feeling rocks that couldn't seem to decide if it wanted to cling or slip against her skin like velvet.
It was possible to call into Being something that you had never seen. But it wasn't that likely that she had done so while unconscious or worse. So someone else was probably responsible for the fascinatingly foreign geography that she was seeing. More than a little bit curious, she followed the path. It wound up, generally, but also curled sharply around large rock structures and occasionally traipsed carelessly through cave systems without seeming to care that it would be much more practical to simply point up.
Whoever had thought this up was either an avid hiker, or simply recreating something they had already seen.
The second possibility sent a trill of unease up her spine. This looked nothing like Ferelden. She would know, she'd been watching as poor Alistair crossed half of it in his silly metal shoes for months.
'How far away did I end up?' Echo chewed on her lip without stopping to examine her increased propensity for mirroring body language and nonverbal communication.
This could be bad. Really bad. How could she find Alistair again if she had no idea where she was, or even how far away he was?
Echo had to frown. Why was that so important to her? He didn't need her help, exactly. Alistair was a very competent man, and he'd really been doing well lately. It had made sense for her to linger when she couldn't leave. After that, it had been what, inertia?
The ugly spotted aura that she was becoming more aware of as she traveled uphill provided a disconcerting real-world accompaniment to the thoughts she was trying not to entertain. It wasn't possible that she had wanted to stay in the world of the living just because it was enjoyable, right? That behavior was near demonic. Sure, it was much more interesting and vivid than her homeland, but that didn't mean she was exactly about to push around Alistair to make room for her in his skull.
'Am I really certain about that?' Echo barely noticed that the plants were becoming smaller and paler as she neared the summit. 'I mean, I was completely controlling his body at the end there. It seemed so logical at the time, but in retrospect it's a little disturbing that I would do that to a living person. It was for his good, of course, but I didn't really have permission. And what if I hadn't wanted to give it up?'
It was hard to claim even in the privacy of her own soul that she was certain she was immune to that temptation. There was a unique thrill associated with real flesh in the living world. A living body was a paradox of ghastly strength and pitiful weakness completely unlike anything in her world. There was matter in the Fade, of a sort, but not anything like the heavy, clinging stuff the mortals had.
Unnerved, Echo tried to put the self-doubt out of her mind.
"Woah." The word fell out of her mouth heavily, unbidden. The summit of the mountain was verdant and beautiful, with draping vines over elegant stone columns.
Wait. The columns looked familiar, in a way. She crept closer to the outcropping of stones and nearly tripped over more vines.
Within a few moments, it became obvious what they reminded her of.
"Tombstones." She muttered with cheer she didn't feel. Of course they were. It wasn't like she would have managed to stumble upon a beautiful, deserted paradise with Stonehenge.
And now that she really looked at the foliage, there was something a little off about it. Although it was green and healthy-looking from a distance, up close it was a sickly sort of yellow. There were growths on it that seemed shockingly similar to demonic taint, infesting and strangling the actual plant life.
Echo would have touched it, to make sure, but it didn't really seem like a good idea. She'd already probably overstayed her welcome wherever she was, and feeling up a demon's personal garden wouldn't win her favors.
Movement on the edges of her vision caught her eye, and she quickly ducked behind one of the gravestones.
A young elven woman happily plodded through the graveyard, paying no mind to her surroundings. Echo would have sneered a bit, but she'd been doing a pretty damn good version of that herself only a few minutes ago. She didn't really have room to judge.
The closer the girl got, the more familiar she seemed. Echo couldn't place her face for the life of her, however.
'Could be an elf from the Alienage.' She couldn't rule that out. She'd only paid them cursory attention the one day she and Alistair were there. But then she probably wouldn't have been able to recognize them at all, right? Or maybe a dreamer she'd seen before. That seemed much more likely.
A pride demon lumbered out from the other side of the mountaintop, and Echo froze. Before she'd met Alistair, she hadn't needed to concern herself with demons. She was powerful enough to defend herself from most (if not all) of them, and uninvolved enough that they wouldn't bother to harm her in the first place.
In her current state, however, she was little more than a kitten with claws. She would barely be able to annoy a demon like this before it would crush her like a rotten fruit.
She shrunk back and clutched at the gravestone she cowered behind. She could try to save the girl, but that wouldn't end well for either of them. And the demons couldn't actually harm anyone that hadn't gone into a pact with them. They needed the connection to the dreamer's spirit to do anything so tangible.
Echo would just have to wait back and hope the girl didn't do anything stupid so that they could both leave this hellish mountain alive.
"Hello." The demon sleazed, and when the girl turned a dopey, wide-eyed look in its direction, Echo almost slapped herself. It was the same dumb girl she'd caught talking to a desire demon maybe a few months before.
'Didn't I tell you to not do this?' She groaned mentally, being cognizant to not make any noise and make the demon aware of her presence. 'It's like no one even listens. Do they like being flesh puppets?'
Apparently, this girl had no higher aspiration in life, as she excitedly chattered about some cursed mirror to a millennia- old pride demon. It was probably the easiest sell he'd ever had, Echo reflected bitterly.
The girl did everything but actually make a contract, but Echo was sure the pride demon was just as aware that it was only a matter of time. The girl had large goals, and few options to accomplish them. She was just isolated enough to take the bait entirely, and the only thing holding her back from finishing the deal was probably an innate (and entirely reasonable) fear of dealing with demons.
"So if I need your help, I just… call to you?" The girl gawked curiously up at the pride demon's grinning face.
Echo's stomach lurched.
"Yes." The demon said, with a false hint of modesty. "When you have need of me, you cut yourself, and the blood will finish the contract. The seal I place upon you will call me to you."
So that was how they did it, Echo realized sickly. The seal wasn't something the mages truly understood, most likely. It was old, old magic. The seal indicated ownership, of course. And one of the earlier things learned about magic was that you could harm someone with a sample of their blood and exercise limited control over them with it. The more times the mages used their blood to summon a demon, the more control the demon took over them. Then, once they had enough, the demons did away with the mortal's soul entirely and absorbed it.
'And make themselves stronger here as a result.' She reasoned, glad that she didn't have a body to get sick in.
And this demon certainly didn't need the boost. He was unbearably strong, and incredibly old. There was no way that Echo could allow him to leave the Fade. The amount of damage he could do to the mortal world was devastating.
She would have to remove the seal. If the girl took long enough to take the demon's offer, Echo might be strong enough to offer him resistance when he found the change.
It didn't matter, really. It had to be done, regardless of how Echo was going to fare. At least it was unlikely that she was able to be destroyed- probably. But she might end up a powerless wisp for a very long time.
As the girl hesitantly agreed to minutae of demon possession (and wasn't that a strange prospect), Echo suddenly tensed, feeling eyes on her. Horror gripped her as she met the demon's gaze, and it winked.
He'd known she was here? And since when? The demon didn't even seem troubled by her presence. In fact, it seemed to enjoy it immensely and grinned ferally when she cringed.
The girl also seemed taken aback by the demon's renewed sense of enthusiasm. She squirmed in an ill-disguised attempt to shake the terror that seemed to sieze her entirely.
The demon merely flashed more rows of teeth before disappearing. There was no noise, no puff of smoke. It merely vanished, leaving Echo and the girl alone in the clearing. The girl heaved a sigh of relief, and quickly left.
Echo felt much the same way, and followed her quarry down the mountain and through a well-hidden path to an encampment.
Large land-ships were parked in a large circle, with beautiful sails drifting down almost to the ground. They looked somehow both silky and intangible. Evidently the young woman possessed a vivid imagination, to be able to recreate her living space in such detail. Echo resisted the urge to run her fingertips along the sheets of fabric, and kept her eyes on her quarry.
The woman skipped up to one of the land-ships and clambered inside excitedly. Echo followed her cautiously, uncomfortably aware that there was still no one else in the camp.
She found the young woman scribbling on a leaf of paper. The girl was far too occupied with her task to notice Echo creeping up behind her.
'So if I were a creepy demon, where would I put a seal on a young and impressionable girl?' She pondered facetiously. It was likely somewhere easily accessible, somewhere non-sex related, so the girl would feel comfortable. It was probably also covered by clothing, because it would also be able to be seen on her physical body.
That was when she noticed that the girl kept holding her left forearm up to her face and smiling. She ran her fingers along it reverently, and set her arm back down and continued to write.
'Annnd we have a winner.' Echo thought, trying not to roll her eyes. This girl was certainly no spy in training, that was for sure.
Or, more accurately, the girl thought that she had safety and privacy in her own aravel in the deserted Fade, which would have normally been a valid assumption. It was just her bad luck that Echo was sticking to her like a parasite.
In any case, it would be relatively easy to find a moment to erase the pride demon's seal on the young woman's arm, while she was distracted. Hopefully, she wouldn't notice that it was gone for some time, seeing that she wore long sleeves in the first place. The young woman wasn't careless by any means, and wouldn't be checking that often, for fear someone else might notice.
Echo settled back, curiosity now piqued. This girl had been approached by not one, but two demons of considerable power. What was there about her that intrigued them?
And if they were so interested, it made it all the more important that they not be able to have her. The demons wouldn't be aware of her reduced power for some time, hopefully. Her very presence might keep most of them away. And the pride demons tended to think too much of themselves and not enough of other spirits to defend their claims. Doubtless, the demon would be laughing himself sick, thinking that Echo would never find his seal and threaten his potential host.
'So I'll follow you for a bit.' She thought somewhat fondly of Alistair, and how he'd probably be proud of her for bothering to help someone that wasn't impolitely hemorrhaging on her feet.
She should probably check on him, in fact. Or send someone else to do it.
The girl (Merrill, her name was, sounded more like a name for a mouse than a person) was evidently a very sweet but entirely naive girl. She chittered to herself about fixing a tainted mirror, about saving her people, and preserving elvhen history.
She didn't evidently see the inherent hypocrisy in restoring a cursed object to somehow help her people, but there wasn't really anything Echo could do about that. Not to mention the fact that her people were decidedly against her working on the damned thing in the first place. Evidently her specific brand of well-intentioned naivety was the exception rather than the rule in her clan.
Echo was in a pretty good mood, all things considered. The pride demon, true to form, had not appeared. Most of the other demons were too afraid of him to even try to bother Merrill, and Echo kept the dumber ones at bay. Merrill was safe for now, and Echo had even managed to find time to spend with Alistair.
Apparently, being King was just as irritating as he thought it would be, but he seemed to be good at it. Mostly, they talked about random things, from his insatiable cheese lust to the strange things she saw around the Dalish camp.
He was interested in her work with Merrill, of course. She couldn't tell him everything, but she had made sure to tell him enough that he knew the inherent risk.
Alistair wasn't very happy that she could be crushed into a wispy mess by a pride demon, but he had enough respect for her to let her make that decision herself. He obviously missed having someone to talk to at all hours of the day.
Echo did feel somewhat guilty for that, but she knew time with Alistair wasn't safe anymore. The seed of doubt had rooted itself in her head and wouldn't go away. She'd never be able to forgive herself if she betrayed and destroyed Alistair. Becoming a demon would be bad enough, but she didn't want to harm him at all.
She declined his requests to come with him with grace, but accompanied him in the Fade instead. He said it helped him to sleep better, and she certainly didn't mind. He found his own way to the Dalish camp now, and curled up beside her in the long grass.
Echo sighed, pleased. This time, things were going much better. No blood magic, disappearing demons, or darkspawn in sight.
Merrill was tinkering on the ground, evidently playing with something small and shiny. Echo had learned quickly that Merrill could never sit still for even a moment. Even as she wrote, she bounced her knees and worried her lips. It was like the girl was just so excited, so full of life that it was constantly bubbling up out of her.
When Merrill raised it a bit higher, Echo noted that it appeared to be a shiny, long object that glinted and hurt her eyes. Before she even had time to register what that meant, Merrill disappeared, and the Fade instantly dimmed.
"What the what?" Echo muttered, disoriented. She looked in all directions, but nothing else had changed. Then she felt pain.
She hadn't felt pain, really, since she'd died. Even when she was in Alistair's body, the sensations had been dulled somewhat, since she wasn't really connected to his tissue. The part that was awful about it had been its long absence, and she hadn't been used to it at all.
This, however, was real pain. It tore at her chest and head, and she curled in on herself to try to hold herself together. Was this something that the pride demon had done? Had he made it so that she couldn't tamper with his seal as she'd intended, or had he just found out and set out to punish her?
She screamed, and rolled onto her side. Echo wrapped her arms around her knees, and placed her head as close to her lap as she could manage. The pain didn't subside in the least, unfortunately. It yanked her, hard, in the direction of Merrill's aravel. The land-ship creaked ominously, as if issuing some sort of threat, and Echo felt the painful force yank her again.
This time, it drug her on the ground half a meter. Echo clawed at the ground, and willed herself to hold on. The force disappeared for a few moments, but Echo didn't allow herself to relax.
This turned out to be a good call when the force pulled at her again, and drug her a meter. She was only a few meters away from the aravel now. Something was telling her that she did not want to go in there. The warning rang all through her and provided her a little strength to resist the latest pull, but she was still drug farther than the last time.
Only a few more rounds of this, and she would be done for. She was unsure of what awaited in that land-ship, but Echo knew it wouldn't be good.
Another yank, and she found herself practically on the stairs up to the door.
"Shit." She sobbed uncontrollably into the unforgiving fake dirt. "I don't want to go like this. What the hell is happening?"
The next pull was much worse than the ones previous, and she knew more than felt herself fly into the land-ship haphazardly, and a strangely familiar snap at her core that she couldn't place in her current mental state.
She felt lethargic, but the pain was gone. Echo waited and when no rushing wave of pain enveloped her, opened her eyes.
Pain flooded through her like she was being stuck by thousands of knives. Echo gasped out in agony, and became suddenly aware of pain in her knees. She pried open her eyes and looked down.
She was in a small room, covered in blood. The coppery smell filled her nostrils, and she tried to writhe away from it, but found herself far too weak. She rose her hands up to try to use her energy to force herself out of this part of the Fade.
"Hands." She murmured in confusion. "Why do my hands look so meaty?"
They were also coated in a thick layer of blood, and she could feel deep cuts along the palms of her hands. They stuck together when she closed her fists, and she could feel the drying blood cracking along the gouges in her palms as she moved them.
Then it all began to make sense.
"I'm in a body." Echo whispered fearfully, trying to take in her surroundings in light of this new discovery. The voice that warbled along with her words was familiar, but not her own.
She looked down at her legs again, to confirm her theory. She traced mailed leggings down her thighs that met with thick leather wrappings. Her feet were apparently uncovered, and felt suddenly cold.
"Shit, Merrill?" She called hopelessly. "Merrill, where are you?"
Her whole body was starting to get strangely cold. And Merrill wasn't answering.
"Ok, ok." She tried to calm herself, but wasn't terribly effective. "I'll heal her up, I'll fix the bleeding, and then she'll come back and we'll all laugh about this later, probably over tea and biscuits."
Echo clumsily healed the worst of the wounds, and had to lie down. There was so little blood in the body that she was surprised Merrill wasn't dead.
"How do you make new blood?" She wondered sluggishly, staring up at the ceiling. "I think I need to drink water, yes?"
She crawled over to a water pitcher by Merrill's bed and began to dutifully chug it down. Once it was all gone, she slumped over on the floor.
'The heart needs the blood, we breathe in to get oxygen, the heart pumps it everywhere else.' She remembered dully. 'So we need to work on the heart.'
The heart was barely moving at all, but she managed to get it pumping again with a few small bursts of her energy. Within a few minutes, she began to notice feeling returning to her fingertips. Then she started to feel warmer, and less exhausted.
She still wasn't in good condition, but it was definitely a start. Echo warily glanced at the blood spattered room and shook her head. She was in no condition to clean that right now, even though it desperately needed to be done. Merrill would have to do that tomorrow. Echo pitifully crawled up onto the bed, and collapsed there.
The body catapulted her back into the Fade almost instantly, already lost in sleep. Once in the Fade, Echo did the same, too exhausted by her earlier efforts to remain awake.
Awareness came gradually again, with a bitter and foul taste in her mouth that she couldn't explain. She moved her tongue around and encountered more awful-tasting sludge. It coated her tongue and teeth, and kept her mouth stickily shut. She forced her jaw open with a sickly cracking sound out of pure animal instinct.
The air that flooded into her lungs refreshed her slightly, but didn't taste any better. It felt stale and rotten, and Echo wearily opened her eyes.
There was… something, spattered on the wall. Brownish red, and flaking onto the floor. The floor was coated in the substance, dried up rivulets occupying the slats between the floorboards.
She didn't recognize where she was at first, but the reality of the (night? Day? How long had she been unconscious?) before washed over her like an unwelcome tidal wave, bringing both fear and revulsion.
So that was blood all over the floor, and walls, and in her mouth. Luckily it hadn't been too stuck shut, and she'd collapsed with her head to the side. If she'd fallen facing up, she likely would have choked on the blood and died again anyway.
She moved her neck, and it exploded with pain. A choked, wet-sounding gasp issued from her throat of its own accord, and she tried to stay very still to avoid further pain. She had hardly healed anything the night before, and it showed. Echo could feel deep stinging gashes, especially on her arms and hands. The stale air was suffocating, pressing down into the exposed flesh and biting at her nerve endings. Now that she had registered the initial pain, she couldn't block it out.
Maybe healing some more of the injuries was in order before assessing her situation.
The gashes on her arms were deep, but there was a deeper wound on her chest that needed to be addressed first. Echo concentrated on knitting flesh back together, but it was a slow and agonizing process. The blood was already clotted and cool, scabbing over her wounds. She had to expend considerable energy to scour the wound clean before closing it up, and the muscle tissue was now stiff and beginning the long healing and scarring process.
Echo focused on her breathing in an attempt to ignore the worst of the pain. It didn't really work, but it gave her some modicum of comfort. At least she was doing something, anyway.
The wound closed up sluggishly, but at least it was done. She lay on the bed, taking in deep breaths and quietly rejoicing in the lack of accompanying agony. In a few minutes, she would gather her strength and try to get the worst of the gashes in her arms. Her legs weren't injured at all, but she couldn't get up off the bed without the use of her arms, especially in such a weakened state. She had very little blood to go around, and being unable to eat or drink wasn't helping.
The metallic, earthy smell of blood was beginning to turn her stomach as well. She needed to heal herself as soon as possible and get back to the Fade. This mess was Merrill's problem, and not hers.
Echo managed to mostly suffocate the idea that Merrill was likely down with a serious case of being dead, in favor much-needed hope.
Didn't Merrill have any friends? Shouldn't someone notice that she hadn't left her aravel and investigate? It had been a fairly long time, by even her conservative time estimates.
Well. Waiting and praying for a rescue from strangers wasn't a good strategy, so she tabled it for the moment.
Plus, it was unlikely she'd be able to convince anyone that she was Merrill, or "Totally a really nice spirit, honest, it's just that these things keep happening to me without my consent, kind of like a Monday, you know?"
So really, that would probably be the worst thing that could happen. Unless she could feign a concussed sort of terror (and who was she kidding, feign? She couldn't roll over, for crap's sake) and then deal with it later. That sounded pretty nice. And then someone else could clean up all the blood.
Or just burn the whole damn thing down and start new, which was honestly probably a lot less work.
Echo groaned, or rather gurgled, in displeasure and irritation. This mess was going to take forever to clean up.
She was really starting to hate meat suits.
She had managed to fix the worst of the physical damage within an hour or so, and was in the lengthy process of scraping the blood off the woodwork (and wasn't that going to stain) when a confident knock sounded on the door of the aravel.
Echo froze. This wasn't how anyone should find her. She frantically piled all of the blood-soaked rags into a corner, and shoved her desk in front of it.
It didn't really hide it, and it certainly wouldn't hide the smell. She considered that for a moment. It was probably too late to start a small "accidental" fire, and the light streaming in from the skylights made it obvious that she couldn't shove the whole damn thing off a cliff and call it a loss.
So how was she going to hide… all this?
The floors were still grimy with bloody footprints, and there was blood all over the walls, ceiling, and furniture. She was positively soaked in it, as well.
'I probably look like a serial killer.' She realized with dawning horror, half-aware that the door to the aravel was being gently pulled open.
"Da'len?" A soft voice called, and Echo whipped her head to the source of the sound. An elven woman was leaning into the aravel, with concern written on her face. The woman surveyed the blood-covered contents of the aravel with a keen eye, and turned back to Echo.
"What happened, da'len?"
Echo moved her mouth, but couldn't think of anything to say. "Sorry, Merrill was trying to summon a big, creepy demon, but I kind of screwed that up for her and she's probably dead?" didn't sound like a winning position to take. At best, she'd think Merrill had cracked like an egg. At worst, she'd probably take her at her word and kill her.
"I told you that blood magic was an unwise choice, da'len." The woman murmured, but still didn't step inside. "Are you all right?"
It took great effort, but Echo managed to shake her head. She stumbled towards the woman haphazardly, hoping that the woman would interpret her silence positively.
When she got close, the woman suddenly grabbed at her chin and angled her face forward, moving it in the light. With her other hand, she brought a bright blue light up to Merrill's body and ran it up and down her torso carefully. After a long few moments, she addressed Echo again.
"There are no signs of demonic possession, at least. And you seem to have healed yourself well enough. Did you find what you sought?"
Echo slumped. She really doubted Merrill had gotten anything out of that exchange but a painful demise.
The woman was no longer settling for her silence. "Yes?" She pried indelicately and affixed Echo with eerie eyes.
"No," she managed to rasp. Tears welled up at the effort. "Never again."
Hopefully that would cut down on the amount of suspicion she was put under. She may not be a demon, but that didn't mean she wanted to be discovered inhabiting someone else's body. There were powerful magics that could bind or completely destroy her. Elvhen mages were likelier than most to know them.
The woman's face lightened with relief, but the caution didn't entirely leave her eyes.
Keeper Marethari watched Echo like a hawk for weeks. It wasn't that she figured out that Echo wasn't Merrill, but she did seem to be under the impression that if left unattended Merrill would drain the clan dry in order to fix a reflective hunk of glass.
Echo felt insulted on Merrill's behalf. Not to mention she didn't particularly enjoy being examined for the flaws of an entirely different person. She was a beautiful and unique butterfly, equipped with her own crippling flaws and personality defects.
'I have to get out of here as soon as possible.' Echo thought in irritation, trying her best not to glare at the unfortunate hunter that had been assigned to supervise her while she did what bears do in the woods. The woman shifted her feet awkwardly, which was a surprisingly ungainly move for someone so skilled in woodsmanship.
'She's probably making so much noise so she doesn't have to hear or think about me pooping.' Echo thought depreciatingly. 'There are some things I didn't miss about being corporeal.'
It didn't help that Merrill's body was gangly and short, where Alistair's was strong and imposing. She felt more like a small collection of loosely bundled sticks than a person. Every movement took much less force than she'd gotten used to, and left her arms swinging like weathervanes while she lurched around on tiny, bare feet.
So now everything was just that much harder to deal with. She'd managed to pass it off so far as extreme blood loss and temporary damage, but she would need to figure this out soon. Echo could barely pass herself off as Merrill now, and the clan wasn't likely to continue being so forgiving. Eventually, they'd expect Merrill to get back to being Marethari's First, and stop shuffling around and gaping at everything like a ninny.
She would need to make a plan of escape, and talk with Marethari tomorrow. It wouldn't be so unbelievable that she needed a change of pace after such a traumatizing event, right?
With that in mind, she struggled to re-clapse her stupid Elvish belt buckle and rejoined her unwanted companion. They trudged back to camp silently, and Echo immediately barricaded herself into her new aravel as soon as they returned.
She needed a plan. For that, she would likely need access to Merrill's memories. Echo flopped onto the bed clumsily, and brought her arms up around her head.
Delving into Merrill's memories wasn't nearly as easy as it was with Alistair. In Alistair's head, information just jumped around as he thought of it, and she found whatever she wanted with relative ease.
If Alistair's head was a well-organized library with an attentive (if excitable) staff, Merrill's was something more like a dank catacomb of information. Instead of having things brought to her, she had to laboriously search them out and bring them to light, before blowing the dust off and reading.
Merrill really was dead, then. She had to be, to not have made her presence known in the month or so Echo had been occupying her body.
'So I really am some sort of corpse walker.' Echo frowned, disgusted. 'Not how I wanted this to happen.'
It wasn't really a revelation. The reality of her situation had been obvious since she first awoke to a blood-covered aravel with no Merrill persona to be found. She'd just ignored it until now, because it was depressing and awful.
But here in the recesses of Merrill's mind, she couldn't even ignore it. How could she? Everything felt and looked like a total mess.
At least the information was still there, though it was a cold comfort.
After a few hours of searching, Echo managed to find what she needed. She was near Kirkwall, a human settlement that had formerly been a part of the Tevinter Imperium. If she could convince Marethari that she was traumatized, and needed to go to the Alienage in Kirkwall, she could escape. If she couldn't convince Marethari, she could still run to Kirkwall anyway. It was likely a former slave-trafficking city had a few places to hide.
Merrill didn't know exactly where Kirkwall was, since the Dalish didn't go there, but she had known enough that it narrowed down Echo's path considerably. She would have to go down the mountain, and past some treacherous coastline. Since Kirkwall was on the sea, it should be relatively easy to find. Or maybe she could even see the city from on top of Sundermount?
The possibility was tempting, but the information available to her suggested that was a no-go. It had been a burial ground of sorts, and a battleground. The Veil was torn badly up there, and a dangerous place to be.
Echo wasn't anywhere near at 100% yet, and her control over Merrill's body was still laughable. She wasn't ready for any sort of combat situation she could avoid.
So she would have to try her luck going down the coastline. Merrill seemed to think there were bandits and raiders down there, so she would have to be careful there, too. But humans were much less concerning to her than demons. And she could probably sneak her way down there, even if Marethari wouldn't send a few hunters to escort her there.
And once she was in Kirkwall?
Well, Echo remembered enough of cities to know that there were plenty of places to get lost in one, if one wanted. Or if they didn't, which was more concerning. But the Alienage in Denerim had been a fairly tight-knit community, and they liked to take care of their own. If she could find Kirkwall's Hahren and convince them she was useful, she wouldn't have any problems in the Alienage.
Echo wasn't sure how she would manage to live there, as Merrill didn't have any general skills and Echo was about as culturally up-to-date as that damn Eluvian Merrill killed herself over. But that was something she could figure out later.
'One problem at a time.' She promised herself, as she absent-mindedly rubbed her hands together. Tomorrow, she'd talk to Marethari and get her ticket out of this dump. Then she could think about gainful employment.