A/N: Guys, this chapter's very important to the storyline - so it's much longer than all the previous chapters. Enjoy.
I remember my way around the ruins – I was so proud of myself for like a whole ten minutes, until we were attacked by gigantic, and poisonous, spiders. They're hairy, drooling things that are ridiculously creepy and mean. I've backed into a side room to hide while everyone else fights those nasty creatures. One had spit poison on me and it burnt and ate through the skin on my shoulder with a green smoke and a harsh acidic smell. It hurt so much that I went into a blind rage, that's all I can think to call that mindlessness, and drained the spider that spat at me into a... husk of a thing with the weird blood magic-reaver webs in my skin. Once I was throughly disgusted with myself and completely healed, I regained enough sense to get myself out of harms way and hide. I don't know how to fight. I know well enough not to put myself in that situation any longer than I must.
The sounds of battle last a few tense moments more, and when I can't hear the spider's... hissing anymore I peer around the room's corner to see Leliana gathering what arrows she can, and everyone else shaking off black and green... goo from their weapons. Morrigan has a pretty bad looking burn on her arm too, the red raggedness a stark contrast to her paleness, and I watch her healing it with her magic and squeezing her luminous eyes shut at the pain as she does so. Those are some awful spiders.
"Lady seer, where have you gone off to?" I hear Alistair call out, and I walk to the decrepit room's barely existent doorway to wave at him in answer.
"Over here," I clasp my hands together in slight nervousness. "Are all of those things dead?"
"As dead as dead can be," Sloane sheathes his daggers at his belt in a practiced movement. "Is there anything useful in that room?" He asks while he walks towards me with a slight limp with one leg. "We could use more elfroot – even to chew on. That venom is a vile thing."
I look up from where I was looking at his leg and turn around to walk further into the room in an effort to answer his question, "No. I-" I cut myself off abruptly as something occurs to me, "I remember this room though."
I practically run to the far right corner of the room after I utter those words, and move rubble and dirt until I find what I'm looking for – that soul gem with the elf trapped inside. I know that elf's there, and when I find the gem a pleased smile spreads across my face when I pick it up in triumph. The periwinkle colored sludge inside of the diamond-cut gem moves sluggishly at my touch. The gem itself is a little warm and vibrating just slightly in the palm of my hand. I can feel the vibrations travel all the way up my arm, and I startle almost hard enough to drop it when I hear an accented, soft feminine voice speak elvish at me in my head after the feeling. I know it to be elvish because I can pick out a few words that I remember of the language invented for the game.
"I don't know what you're saying," I say aloud to it in stunned fascination. "I don't know elvish."
"Oh," she says at me in my head now in a language I can understand. "I am sorry. I did not realize you were human."
"I am," I reply. "And you're a Dalish Arcane Warrior. You've been stuck in this gem for hundreds of years, haven't you?"
"Yes," she sighs. "My name... it is Aereweld. I have not forgotten it. What is your name friend?"
"I'm Karie." I smile down at the gem that I'm watching. The sludge in it moves about at both my words and hers.
"You are one of the dragon-kin, but different." Her disembodied voice has a curious tone to it now. "You have not taken the dragon's blood, yet you have their spirit; their power. How did you obtain that then?"
"You mean my reaver skills," my smile turns quickly into a frown, and I can barely hear the others talking from behind me since I'm so focused on the gem in my hand. I don't really know why I'm talking to the thing, other than I can and it has me completely enraptured. "Blood mages did this to me. I don't know how. But... how'd you know I'm a Reaver?"
"I can sense the power in your touch," she answers with a certainty carried in those few words. "I can also sense your disquiet, friend. I would like to help you, in return for a favor, but first – it would be easier to communicate on a different plane. One we can both see."
I'm silent for a moment at her strange words, and then my world turns white, not black, with a bizarre frazzling sensation that's a stark similarity to the pain I feel from the lines in my skin. I'm so terribly confused when everything I see before me is just this stark white - everything but a petite dark skinned elven woman with leaf-green markings tattooed on her oval-shaped face. Her wild hair is brushed back and her clothes are an odd mixture of metal and cloth. She has a sword at her hip and a twisted wooden staff at her back.
"Aneth ara lethallan - may I call you that? It seems like we know each other already," she smiles impishly after bowing shortly at her waist with one arm crossed against her armored chest.
"Umm... Sure," I reply softly and look around. I'm stunned. What's happening any more? Have I really lost it now? Lost in my mind in my mind - like that stupid movie Inception? Though this reminds me of that scene in the Matrix more... "What happened?" I blurt.
"I have transported our spirits to a sleeper-free plane of the Beyond - one void of nothing but the essence of the Beyond. Accessible to those only with a deep connection to the Beyond, as I happen to be in this form." She walks closer to me, and I can see how muscular she is beneath the fit of her elaborate outfit. She's definitely an Arcane Warrior. "You are the first soul I have spoken with in... well, I don't know how long. Too long. There are times when I can barely remember myself." She frowns harshly. She's standing less than an arm's reach away from me now and still sways closer once she starts talking again. "I do know who, or rather, what you are though, lethallan. You do not hail from this side of the Beyond."
My completely dumbfounded and bewildered silence must give her incentive to explain, because she does, "There are twists in the fabric of the Beyond - tendrils and ripples that flow to other places of existence. You are not from this one, this one we call Thedas, but yet here you are," she tilts her head at me in contemplation. "You must be blessed by Elgar'nan himself to have not been destroyed during your travel here. How did you get here, I wonder? It is linked to this, isn't it?" She raises one delicate hand clad in fingerless gloves to my cheek, and traces a vein of blood magic that I know to be there just beneath my skin. "Who did this to you lethallan? Who mangled the dragon-kin's gifts and forced their creation into you?"
"There were... there were," my head is whirling and for some inexplicable reason I'm still answering her question. "Three blood mages. They're dead now. Sloane killed them."
"One must have made a deal with an ill spirit of fear, yes, there is no other explanation for this. No other creature in the Beyond would dare such a thing - tempering with the fabric of the Beyond. It can rip, just as any fabric, and then chaos would ensue." She puts all her fingers to my cheek then, "I have not had a companionable touch in years. You are a good woman, and you do not deserve such abominable acts on you."
How can anything of what this... this apparition is saying to me possibly be true? So much said and disproved, or proved, with just a few words... It can't be true, can it? Then how come I'm believing it? Why am I so quick to accept that I'm not crazy, just that something crazy happened to me? Is it fool's hope? "Can I go home?" I whisper to the elven woman and feel the hot sting of tears welling in my eyes. I'm getting overwhelmed again.
"I'm afraid, but... I do not think that is possible, lethallan. This spirit of fear must have destroyed itself in bringing you here. No spirit can exist for long outside a tendril of the Beyond - whether that tendril is the Beyond itself or in a vessel tethered to it, like any mage-born. You are forever here, lethallan," she whispers with a sadness in her voice that's too horrible not to be genuine. "I am sorry."
"So I'm not crazy?" I'm openly crying now, and she wipes the tears from my cheeks as they fall. "I'm really here? This is real? How can I believe that?"
"In time you may," she rests both her hands on my cheeks. "I can help you understand, lethallan, in exchange for your promise to aid me. I wish oblivion, you must understand. I have lived long past my time."
"I-" my voice cracks. I'm drowning in my thoughts. How can what she's saying be true? Any of it? I had thought... but it was foolish to think of this as reality, isn't it? "How can you help me understand? I-I don't."
"I can gift you my knowledge – all of it. I can give this to you here, in this plane of the Beyond. In my time, I understood the subtleties of existence and life far better than most – that is how I knew I could preserve my soul in a blessed gem in order to save myself. I had only to wait for someone to release me, so I could return to my body, but none came. Please," she says roughly, "I understand more than you think, lethallan – I only ask that you destroy the gem and set me free in return," her violet-colored eyes are shining in her desperation. "I can even teach you my trade, though you are dragon-kin and not mage-born and could not use all my knowledge in that regard. You would know swordsmanship if you do not already, lethallan, and you could learn to truly harness your ill-wrought gifts with this knowledge – I promise you. Please set me free, I beg of you."
"Do whatever you want," I gasp. I can't... I can't focus. I can't think. But her nails are digging into my face and she looks so upset, so desperate, I can't ignore it.
"Thank you lethallan," she soothes the pads of her fingers over the red marks she made on my face. She then slowly wraps her arms around my back in a loose hug, "I will not prolong my gifts, lethallan. I wish death."
Images... so many images pass through my mind's eye with every breath I take. Sounds, tastes, feelings, even emotions surge within me with every image. It feels as though it's me, but with every image my hands are dark and inked in green – these are Aereweld's memories. Not mine. Her knowledge she's passed into me, and yet as it's done it feels like my own. These images are accompanied by the conversations of people that seem familiar, but aren't. A dark hand holding a light one and a fluttering feeling of hope and desire passes blissfully through me. An eagle's flight and the feelings of joy as the breeze from its wings passes overhead is refreshing. A... tome with symbols and a language I do not recognize, yet I can fully understand is frustrating. Even a brutal battlefield littered with dead, familiar faces – their own blood covering more of their skin than the sun is cold and stabs sharper than any blade. The feelings of sadness, horror, and shame are nearly too much to bear at that point. And then I see the blade protruding from a bloodied stomach. The pain is cold and sickening. The shock is electrifying.
"It is done," I hear Aereweld whisper when the images pass and are replaced with so much white. "Release me when you awaken. Please lethallan."
I feel myself come to with a gasp - "Aereweld!" I exclaim and sit up coughing on heavily incensed air. I'm back to myself. I can feel it - my body feels heavy and slow in comparison to my mind.
"Karie!" Someone shouts in return, though it is not Aereweld's soft voice. My thoughts are coming too quickly for me to recognize the voice, and the sensations I'm feeling are too overwhelming for me to process. My vision is blurry when I look around briefly, but then I see Aereweld's periwinkle gemstone in my fist and my attention is quickly focused on it. My knuckles are white and my palm is bloodied from how strongly I'm holding that stone to me. My blood against the purple of the stone is all I can look at.
"Get the Keeper!" That same voice shouts. "She's awake!"
"Aereweld!" I shout at the stone in a cracking voice. "I can't do magic – how am I supposed to set you free?!"
"Perhaps I can help with that, falon," I turn my head and my vision I focuses on... Lanaya, that has to be her. She's standing by my feet, and I'm laying on... furs?
"Aereweld – she's stuck in this soul gem," I explain in my mania. I hope the Dalish mage understands. "She made me promise to set her free – I saw... I know how. A crushing prison spell, please. Please help me – she... she just doesn't want to be trapped like this anymore." Every feeling Aereweld ever felt passed through me, became my own – even her desperation for death. For an end she has been denied for so long. "Asha mana – melvana. Asha din'isala. Asha ensansal emma. Asha souveri. Asha din'uth. Sahlin, Lanaya. Halam sahlin, Keeper." I take a deep breath after my pleas and I cradle that last bit of Aereweld to my chest in my aching hand. "Please."
Lanaya blinks slowly, and what color she had on her pale skin has completely disappeared. She visibly swallows before she answers in a shaking breath, "I will help you, falon, but you must tell me what's happened here."
Translations (some are roughly translated):
Aneth ara: a friendly greeting
Lethallan: "clansman"; a familiar, casual reference
Elgar'nan: the Dalish God of Vengence
Asha mana – melvana: "A woman from long past - a long time ago"
Asha din'isala: "She has not died"
Asha ensansal emma: "She wants me to gift her this"
Asha souveri: "She is tired"
Asha din'uth: "She should not be eternal"
Sahlin: "Now"
Halam sahlin: "End it now"
Falon: "friend"
