Author's note: This chapter contains more strong allusions to sexual assault and other potential triggers.

White Spire, Val Royeaux

16 Harvestmere, 9:39 Dragon

oOoOo

Careful observation and dispassionate analysis were the keys to knowledge, and knowledge, in its turn, was the key to success in any endeavour. Thus it was that Morrigan had spent the better part of the intervening twenty-five hours since her departure from the insufferable bard in her favoured avian form, that of an unassuming crow. She'd flitted from sill to perch about the tower, observing as dispassionately as she could; it had been quite easy, for the most part, at least of the floors beneath the Lord Seeker's office. They were filled with mindless cows, corralled into these paltry walls by fear alone, lowing for someone to save them from the templars, from the world, from themselves. In the years since her rather reluctant aid in salvaging the Fereldan Circle from its own logical conclusion, Morrigan's opinion of the institution had changed but little. Most of the mages herein did not even merit her scorn, much less her pity.

Such emotional distance was somewhat harder to maintain in the tower's higher reaches, when she discovered that Leliana's claims had been correct after all. Part of her, a larger part than she cared to admit, wanted simply to flee at the sight of the elf that she'd once consoled in the Deep Roads, now reduced to an automaton who spoke only when addressed by the moustachioed man. She was utterly unrecognisable, her thick hair shorn down to the very scalp, a wide band of cloth wrapped carelessly around her head to obscure the voided socket of her left eye, her battle-worn face bereft of any animation. Unlike with every other mage in this tower, Morrigan had no doubts that Athadra's presence here was entirely involuntary, and she knew that not a few of the Lord Seeker's minions must have died to bring her here. She knew because of the simple pewter ring that Athadra still wore on the third finger of her left hand, the ring that Morrigan herself had once worn at the behest of her mother, the ring that Lambert van Reeves had not seen fit to remove from his new slave's finger. She had passed the metal band to the elf in a fit of sentimentality that Athadra's lifestyle had given her some cause to regret over the past nine years, as the ring's magic awoke whenever its wearer fell into mortal peril, and reported that fact to the ring's owner.

'Twas a state the Warden found herself in on a fortnightly basis, and each time, Morrigan would be jolted with the certain knowledge that the elf was but a hair's breadth from the Void. On the eighth night of Kingsway, more than a month past, Morrigan was wrenched out of bed by a serpent of ice worming its way through her heart, and she had known-or thought she had known-that Athadra drew her last breath in the castle of Highever. After the ice melted within her, the ring was silent, its magic not simply dormant but dissolved. Now 'twas but a lump of metal, as useless as any other, and had its wearer not figured so heavily in Morrigan's life she might have been fascinated to learn that the enchantments her mother had encoded into it could not tell the difference between physical death and magical separation.

As the full moon crested in the northern sky and the hours of night turned into the hours of morning, Morrigan had yet to come to a decision. Her threat to Leliana had not been idle; one way or another, the Lord Seeker would draw his last breath before the sun warmed the Waking Sea. But the question remained as to what, precisely, was to be done about Athadra and the other Tranquil mage that Lambert had taken as his personal property. Morrigan certainly knew what fate she would have preferred, given the choice between death and possession, yet she could not make that choice for one who'd earned the right to decide as thoroughly as Athadra had done. Though she could not simply walk up to the elf and ask; in her current state, the husk of a mage valued only the next breath, whencever it might come.

There was also the complicating factor that Morrigan was not entirely certain how her presence might be welcomed. If Athadra and her companion saw their overseer as a more reliable source of security than the witch herself, they would be liable to join in his defence, and the Warden at least was still equipped with the knowledge to make use of her own life-force, weakened as it was without the presence of mana as a conduit. Such a course would resolve Morrigan's quandary for her, as she would have little choice but to slay the man and the elves all.

At times, the temptation to reveal herself became nearly overwhelming, especially when the Lord Seeker called his charges to bed. She was not precisely appalled to witness the debauchery that the man subjected the Tranquil mages to, nor was she shocked at their mute compliance to every command, every whispered instruction, every groaned entreaty. One would have thought that a man of Lambert's age and position would have long since run out of imagination, especially given the placid docility of his subjects, but hours passed before the Lord Seeker finally succumbed to exhaustion and allowed the elves to fall into dreamless sleep.

Only Athadra did not sleep; she merely lay there, stiffly, staring at the ceiling until Lambert's breathing became deep and even. Then, inexplicably and yet inevitably, the injured elf's head turned to regard the small, paneless window in which Morrigan had been perched for the better part of the night's lascivious festivities. For but a moment, the witch fancied that the elf merely sought to gaze upon the stars in peace, but her blood-coloured eye fixed upon the blackbird crouching so stoically upon the sill. To keep up appearances, Morrigan feigned at pecking the seam between her clawed feet, but when she chanced a glance back toward the bed, she saw that the ruse had not dislodged Athadra's gaze.

She could still go, she knew, flee to plot a more thorough revenge. But she also knew, or at least strongly suspected, that Athadra would take such an action as a betrayal, perhaps one betrayal too many after what felt like a lifetime's worth of deceit. And she also felt the weight of Athadra's stare, bereft though it might be of any emotion, and the witch found she could not turn away. So, instead, Morrigan hopped off of the stony precipice, plummeting to the wooden floor. The room flashed faintly as she fell, her transformation to her human form hardly spanning a single avian heartbeat. She landed with feline grace, making no sound against the thrush-covered wood of the floor. She wore not a single thread to rustle, either, and as she rose she fancied she saw a glimmer of appreciation in the depths of the Warden's vivid eye.

"Be you friend or foe," Morrigan broached, deliberately. "Or simply content to observe, for the nonce?"

Very carefully, the Tranquil elf slipped out of the Lord Seeker's bed, dressed only in the folded cloth that barely covered her ruined eye and partially occluded the sunburst brand which marked her as Lambert's property. The mark was the most offensive the elf had accrued in the long years since last the witch had seen her so naked, but not the most egregious; Athadra's torso was littered with scars new and old, tribute rent from her very flesh and dedicated upon the altar of her sworn duty. The rudest amongst those at the elf's front was a jagged slash across her breastbone, years in the healing but still vivid. The sight constricted Morrigan's throat, so she spoke no more. "I warned him," Athadra said, and the soulless quality of her voice wrenched another spear of ice into Morrigan's chest. "That if he did not kill me, I would kill him." She blinked, turning slightly to regard the still-sleeping Seeker placidly. "You will let me kill him, will you not?"

Morrigan's throat still closed about her answer, her gaze falling upon the deep fissures striped across the elf's back, tokens of discipline accrued before Morrigan's very eyes in the midst of the Blight. The witch had to draw several breaths to banish the ancient memory. "That depends," she managed, after a moment, "upon a number of factors...his survival of the ritual used to mend your sundering being the principal one."

Athadra's reply came slowly, evenly, without the woman turning to face her would-be rescuer. "It is very important that he survive," she said. "I know that I will be quite upset if I cannot kill him."

Even for one of the Tranquil, or perhaps especially so, the elf seemed to consider her impending restoration with surprising alacrity. Morrigan was also mildly surprised at the distress which clenched her heart, for if the Lord Seeker must live, then his lifeblood must not be used to engage the ritual to send Athadra's mind across the Veil. That left but few options at their disposal. "Do you propose to sacrifice your elven companion, as you did Lady Isolde, these many years ago?"

In the very castle that would eventually become her demense, but which at the time was falling prey to a horde of ravenous undead summoned by a demon playing at the heartstrings of a confused and pitiful boy, Athadra had used the mother's blood to save her son. In the time since that decision, the elf had made even more despicable gambits, both acclaimed and virtually unknown, and thus Morrigan could not put such an action beyond her purview. Yet when Athadra's attention returned to the witch, she shook her head, stating simply, "Fiona yet has a part to play."

Morrigan's unease was not settled, for it was not that particular eventuality which had so bestirred her nerves. "We are in a tower full of mages and templars," she pointed out, glancing through the doorless aperture into the Seeker's office proper. "Surely there must be some lyrium about; 'tis perhaps the most well-stocked location in southern Thedas, after all."

"Seekers do not take lyrium," came the elf's stoic reply. "I might attempt to procure an adequate supply from elsewhere in the tower, but that shall increase our risk of discovery quite substantially."

It nearly turned Morrigan's stomach to realise that, toneless as it was, Athadra's statement would have resembled a mewling coward's question when posed by a mind cowed but unsundered. The elf of her memory would never have asked permission to do anything at all, and certainly not in such an obsequious manner. It was that insult which broke down the last vestiges of hesitation within the witch, and she grimaced, casting her eyes onto the still-sleeping Lord Seeker with an irrepressible shudder. "There is but one magical avenue I know which will provide the power we seek, yet spare the man's heart for the moments it will take you to silence it...though I fear you shall mislike the means, once your mind is rendered whole."

Athadra's remaining eye widened slightly with the subtle arch of her scarred brow, the flesh there once cleaved by a buffet from the shield of Loghain Mac Tir, precious minutes before the elf had opened his throat upon the steps of the Landsmeet Chamber in Denerim. "Do you fear for my upset," she wondered, idly, "or that I shall effect retaliation for it?"

"Both," Morrigan admitted, somewhat bitterly, before she could halt the errant breath from escaping her lips. "The restoration process is hardly placid under the most serene of circumstances, and if you have cause, you might act rashly, and come later to regret it."

"You mean I might kill you, as well as him," the elf surmised. "That will not happen," she said, without a hint of pleading or denial. "I cannot understand it now, but I loved you, and it is likely I shall love you again if we proceed."

Morrigan's throat constricted once more, so that she could not have then replied even if she'd wished to, and she took a moment to compose herself until her gaze registered no more emotion than her companion's. "Very well," the witch acquiesced. "Then I shall begin."

oOoOo

She came awake suddenly, all at once, from an interminable blackness. This did not alarm her, for such had been her daily experience for more than a month, ever since that bloody night in Highever. The rough bed felt as usual beneath her body, the blanket overtop her only a bit less noticeable, though unlike normal the bed was completely empty, other than for herself. As she pushed herself up onto her elbows and looked about the familiar room, the elf came to an inescapable conclusion, as impossible as it was. "I dream."

This fact was confirmed by a collection of facts, each impossible in the waking world. When the elf pulled herself off of the bed and to her feet, she saw that she wore a simple tunic and trousers, which the Lord Seeker never would have permitted. When she blinked, moreover, she understood that she looked with both eyes, and an experimental closing of her right eye confirmed that she still retained the ability to see. Her steps were not encumbered by the pain she normally felt upon walking, either.

It was an odd thing to dream after so many blank nights, and it might have been frightening, had she still the capacity to be frightened of such trifles. Even here, though, the overweening terror still suffused every trace of thought, every beat of her heart, bending her will to obedience and blotting out all other considerations but mere survival. Still, though, something akin to curiosity brought her out of the bedchamber and into the Lord Seeker's office, or at least her dream's facsimile of the place.

Even had she the capacity, she would not have been surprised to see the profile of an armoured man standing fast, his back to the doorless archway through which she stepped. Upon a moment's inspection, however, the colour and curve of the metal did not conform to the cast of the Lord Seeker, which brought an incongruity to her mind.

"You are a spirit," she said, a moment later, when all other options had exhausted themselves. Indeed, as the figure turned, she could see the shimmer of the Fade about it.

"Ahh," the spirit said, from behind a full-faced helm, its voice echoing even more oddly than it might've otherwise. "And you are awake...after a fashion, of course. You will not remember me, but I have followed your progress from the shadows of this realm for quite some time."

An old memory surfaced, of a challenge accepted and a test passed. "You are Valour," she pronounced. "I fought you in my Harrowing."

The spirit seemed pleased by this. "And you fought me well, too, especially well for one unaccustomed to combat at arms...though I daresay a retrial would see you the victor far more easily now than in that long-ago combat. You really are the most interesting specimen I have seen come from halls such as these, and I admit it grieved me fearsomely to see you murdered in effigy and be unable to prevent it."

The obvious question presented itself. "Did you wish to intervene?"

"Mightily," Valour replied, planting a mailed fist in the opposite palm. "Yet the only means of protecting you lay in visiting your fate upon another, and her so much less capable. It would have been cowardly and vicious of me, and it would have cheapened the cost of your sacrifice, to no other end but your death."

That was true; in order to prevent the elf's fate, Daya would have had to have been sacrificed in the Fade, which the spirit had apparently been unwilling to countenance. The elf settled upon resolving a different mystery. "Why are we here?"

The spirit's arms crossed before its broad chest. "Do you not recall, brave one?"

Memories bled across the Veil, memories of Morrigan's unexpected appearance in the White Spire, and older ones of their journeys together, many years gone. "We shall remove my fear."

"Not precisely," the spirit corrected, "and not entirely. Fear is a powerful force, and it has its place, even in your most courageous of hearts. But we must return it to its rightful place in your mind, and give you something of the will which has lately been robbed from you."

The elf inclined her head in acknowledgement. She did not desire this outcome; if anything, it made her survival far less likely than the sheltering influence of the Lord Seeker...and yet there was an inevitability to it, even so. She feared the Lord Seeker's displeasure, but a part of her feared the displeasure of her own, of her once-and-future self, all the more strongly. "How is it to be done?"

At this the spirit paused, as though considering the matter deeply. "Were I less scrupulous," Valour said at last, "I would say that the only way to ensure a lasting reparation would be to invite me into your mind, so that I might wear you like a skin and see your world through your eyes."

"My eye," the elf corrected, for in the waking world, she knew she still had but one.

Valour did not contest the interruption, but nor did he acknowledge it. "Yet I have stood here on guard against such ravenous beings, and now I stand ready to offer you a choice. One alternative is simply to have me reach into your mind, and mend what I can of the shorn connection." If a spirit could have a will beyond its animating purpose, Valour seemed indeed to strongly favour this option to the previous.

The elf considered these possibilities mutely for several heartbeats-or would have, if she'd had a heart to truly beat in this place. "And what of other alternatives?"

The chamber echoed with the spirit's muffled sigh. "The door behind me leads to the raw Fade," it cautioned, "and a limitless supply of other spirits with whom you might try to bargain for the same choice...though of the more aloof of my kind, you're unlikely to entice them into the former, while the more ravenous are almost certainly unwilling to entertain the latter. As a last resort, if you wish, you may return whence you came unaltered."

The reality of her predicament, even in this unreal place, pressed in upon her like a cavern in the Deep Roads. The being before her could not decide, would not force or coerce her beyond what he'd already done, so long ago. The decision would have to be hers, and the prospect of deciding incorrectly was paralytic in its terror. "What consequences might come from this?" She asked, monotonously as always, though the fate of her life depended upon the answer.

"Were I to reach into your soul and reform the pieces," the spirit said, "you would instantly wake, drenched in the emotions currently held suppressed. You have not been sundered long, it is true, but the resurrection of your spirit-self will still take you quite some time to process. In the end, however, you will be closest to your whole self, as valourous and filled with élan as always." Were she of her former wont, the elf might have breached the pregnant pause to prompt the spirit to continue, but in her current state, she was content to wait until Valour was prepared to go on. "If, however, you elect for me to join with you, the rift in your mind will be instantly sealed...but at a cost to us both that thoughtful mages and spirits generally decline to bear."

This she understood, or at least could speculate over. "Would I become an abomination?"

Another pause. "In the eyes of your fellow mortals, yes...though if you are worried about becoming permanently twisted of form into a horror that shall be slain on sight, you need not. Such happens only when a mage's will is overridden by a spirit's desire to bring their own form as close to the mortal realm as possible, corrupting the host's very flesh in the process. I have no desire to cross the Veil in any form whatever, nor even an urge to see your world from behind your eyes, in truth. Yet there are great risks, regardless."

The elf inclined her head. "Explain them."

"I cannot," the spirit rebuffed, "for they differ in each case. I can only say that we shall be unified, of one spirit animating your flesh. No longer capable of conversing such as we are now, for one. And...changed, possibly changed beyond the recognition of your fellows. We still might have no self-possession or control in the immediate aftermath of the event, or our purpose may be warped by the power we shall wield, in its unity greater than either of us have commanded as individual beings."

With that the spirit spoke no more, for long enough that it became clear he would not, unless prompted. The gears of her mind worked furiously, untainted by all but one consideration, and yet the elf could not come to a decision. So she sought more information, in case it might assist her in drawing a conclusion. "Why do you offer to help me, spirit?"

"Ahh," Valour settled. "The real question. Why am I willing, though not eager, to subsume myself to mend you?" He moved from his spot, going to pace in front of the spectral fireplace, unlit but casting a cold glow regardless. The elf followed his movement with her eyes, but did not join him in it. "Time counts for little among spirits, as your studies in a tower not unlike this one will have attested," he went on, after a moment's consideration. "And yet we do note it, those of us who have contact with mortals, at any rate. I have long agreed to test the mettle of mages before they face their ultimate challenge...that is, until I battled you." The spirit paused, and he-the elf noted, in passing, that she was thinking of a spirit as he-turned his eyeless visor upon her. "An apprentice elf with respectable magical ability but little else to recommend you. Expectations for your Harrowing were mixed; the templar set to guard your mortal form in the waking world worried his courage might fail him, should you require the cleansing of fire and steel.

"I agreed to evaluate your worthiness, and I could see that the slightness of your flesh hid a dragon's heart, when all those around you fumbled in ignorance of your worthiness. Yet even I did not imagine that you would best me; hitherto, I had merely to prove apprentices had conviction and a willingness fight even when odds seemed not in their favour...but you stood, alone and unstaved, and you got me to yield.

"From that moment on, though I did not mention word of it to you, I pledged myself to your service. You showed yourself possessed of the strength to master your fear, and of the virtue to turn that strength to your own defence. Afterward, though reviled and suspected and rejected, you defended the meek and defeated foes greater than most of your kind could imagine." Then the spirit knelt, half a room away from her, and he slowly removed his lustrous helmet. There was a head beneath, or at least the form of one, and the elf could see at once that she had erred in assigning the timbre and quality of the voice and its virtues to the guise of a man. The curve of the spirit's jaw and the sweep of its forehead were clearly molded after a strongly-built woman, and when Valour next spoke, the elf could hear it in her unmodulated voice, as well. "I am yours to command, Athadra Surana. Which boon would you have of me?"

The elf looked into the spirit's eyes, her mind working furiously for a long time before she came to her decision.