Kyrn moved through the bleak hallways in a haze until Tamlen stood before her, and her carefully constructed wall of stoicism shattered. All she could do was watch his perfectly copied face serenely gazing back at her, as if lifted from a happier time. His chestnut hair was still tousled unevenly as it always had been. The translucent figure even bore his overly-large nose and bushy eyebrows set around those kind eyes, more quietly contemplative than they ever were in life.

Part of her longed for it to be true, longed for it to really be him, consoling her from a thin window in the veil. But her heart ached with another understanding, that it was also completely false. But how could she turn away from so keen a duplicate, when he came wearing his radiant smile, sun-streaked hair and the sparkle of laughter in his eyes?

He whispered in a dozen dissonant voices like leaves blown over her path, "You think, 'This cannot be Tamlen. Tamlen is gone, he is merely footsteps in the dust.'"

She shook her head slowly, "I tried to find you, Tamlen. Him," she stammered, reminded again that this thing was not him, "Tried to find him-"

"Some things lost can never be found. Some mistakes never unmade…" It replied solemnly, reaching out to her before she stepped back in fright.

The apparition babbled on with reverent sounding nonsense until Kyrn growled, "Enough!" The Guardian had already dangled cryptic phrases before her, but to hear the same vague antagonistic words from her lathellan's lips was more than she could bear.

"You are not him," She snarled, "you cannot fix me like a broken toy! I'm done with this nonsense-"

Alistair hissed a cautionary breath, and tugged at her shoulder with his gauntleted hand. "Calm, Mahariel."

"Those that survive must go on living," Tamlen's voice echoed, "You have suffered enough. It is time to leave that behind. I will see you again."

She punched though the spectre, no more than a cold mist to resist her flailing attack. "NO!" She screeched as Alistair and Lelliana yanked her back in restraint. "What does that even MEAN?!"

"Calm yourself, child," Wynne tried to soothe, a cool icy mist spreading from her hands, until Kyrn shocked them all with a high kick that sent Alistair and Leliana reeling back, and Wynne tumbling to the ground clutching her wrist while her staff clattered to the ground.

"You would bewitch me into silence?" Kyrn snarled, fighting Leliana's grip to try and scream at Wynne, "Is this what your shit religion thinks is funny?! Let's prod the knife-ear about her dead love!" She stomped her foot into Leliana's and relished the yelp of pain as she released her hold. Alistair seemed to finally take the hint, and lifted his hands as she lunged from his grip. Her fist met the wall instead of the apparition's face, and though some of the cracks she heard were actually the old mortar crumbling away, much of it was bone, and she immediately regretted her tantrum.

Sobbing, hiccuping back tears of agony as she clutched her hand, she slid against the time worn stone, studded leather scraping sporadically until she landed haphazardly on her rump, curled up as tight as she could manage, the cold of the floor already pulling the heat of her anger from her ill-clothed legs. Staring down at her tranquility, the apparition finally dispersed into the corridor's fog as if he were never there.

All the while, Zevran stayed his distance, watching her with increasing incredulity as her anger had raged before them. He had been cool and distant since the Guardian had teased out that strange mote of his past. For a man who seemed to regret his lost footwear more than his occupation, she didn't know what to make of his previous outburst, anymore than she knew what to do with her own sorrow. Why did a single woman bother him? And why did it bother her so much?

"What is this?" She sobbed, throat tight, her voice a forced squeak as she rested her forehead against her knees. "Some Andrastian after-life bullshit? What good is it to see my lethallan in the Beyond? What sort of horrible creature would tell Alistair that he ought to be dead, or shame Leliana just for believing in something. Perhaps this is not the resting place of Andraste at all, but a malevolent spirit."

"Enough already, really-" Alistair grumbled, reaching towards her. She smacked his hand away without even thinking, hissing as she struck him with the already injured arm.

Leliana brushed herself off as she stood to proceed to the next cavernous space. "Let the child simper, then," She groused with uncharacteristic spite.

A warm zethyr wafted by her with the sound of resonant bells, and Wynne stood, wiggling her fingers to test her healed wrist with an exasperated frown on her face, "Really, now," She scolded. "Was that necessary?"

Kyrn shook her head silently, shying away from Wynne's advances as the mage tried to get a better look at her injured hand.

"Just let her see, lupita," Zevran quietly persuaded, "She'll just fix your hand."

Her eyes darted between Zevran's unusually kind eyes and Wynne's concerned stare. Finally, after a long moment, she offered up her hand, already feeling the swelling around her knuckles preventing her from closing her fingers. With the briefest of chants and a cold, numbing rush of air, her hand was restored, even if the furtive looks from all those around her told her there was no quick chant to heal the damage done by her thoughtless outburst.

"Thank you," Kyrn muttered to Wynne. She turned to thank Zevran as well, but then realized she only spoke to empty air. Zevran had already turned around to leave the way they had entered.

"Good riddance," Alistair snapped. "Perhaps he'll stay gone."

"Please don't say that," Kyrn whimpered, as exhaustion finished draining the spite from her voice.

Gradually, she picked herself up and they passed through the next two chambers in relative silence. It was lucky that they had Wynne and Leliana with them, because between Alistair and herself, they would not have gotten a single riddle correct.

Even Wynne's intellect and Leliana's religious fervor did not solve every strange question. They were forced to fight and dispel a dark apparition that attacked as Wynne gave them a less than satisfactory response.

She moved like an animated doll through the puzzles and stepping stones that followed, lost in her own head, reliving memories of summer afternoons watching Tamlen's face, stolen away again and again by the rippling surface of the Eluvian. At each turn her thoughts meandered, lead only by the swift instructions from the elder mage to step forward, or back, or hold her position as they proceed through the strange pilgrimage that an ancient magister must have thought would be clever.

"I think we have to strip," Leliana scrunched her face as she read over the text carved into a pedestal before a hedge of fire wreathing a sunlit statue of the Bride of the Maker herself.

Kyrn returned to her body in pins and needles, suddenly aware of the heat of fires and flesh around her: The judgemental mage, the swooning templar and the starry-eyed bard, all looking to her for a final say.

"What?" Kyrn snapped.

"Throw off the trappings of worldly life and cloak yourself in the goodness of spirit. King and slave, lord and beggar, be born anew in the Maker's sight," Leliana read again, raising an eyebrow. "I can only imagine one meaning-"

"Then go first, by all means!" Kyrn snapped back more bitterly than she intended. Leliana stared back her, mouth agape, but she couldn't tell if it was shock at her tone, or the implication. Before she understood what she had done, she and Leliana were blushing more and more red as they stared each other down.

"Not that I wouldn't enjoy the view, but, I, ah," Alistair tried to say, but dissolved into a muttering mess as Kyrn and Leliana both rounded on him with indignant glares.

"Enough of this childishness," Wynne muttered, loosening her robes with three deft flicks of her fingers. Before Alistair's stammers could form into a protest, her clothes were off, and all three of them tried to hide their horror at the glare of her pale skin against their unprepared eyes.

Wynne seemed immune to their heckling, though, looking instead to the fire ahead and their goal before them. "It is not the first time I have walked through fire," she whispered.

With two confident strides, she passed from the safety of the pedestal fully into the flames. There was no burst of charring flesh, no whiff of singed hair. There was only the back of her silhouette showing through the flames before she looked over her shoulder with a kind smile, "Coming, children?"

Kyrn was surprised at how fast she shimmied out of her armor and gambeson. She barely heard Alistair's complaints behind her, bleating for some help with his complicated plate mail as Leliana chortled at his efforts. She plunged into the fire with her eyes closed, a buried hidden facet of her heart longing for some kind of baptism, some answer in the inferno.

But there was none. She breached through the other side of the flames just to see them dissipate around them, welcomed only by the solitary sight of the ancient statue and Wynne's remarkably understanding smile gazing back at her.

She turned back to check on her comrades, seeing Leliana looking almost as lost and confused as her, barely a foot into the fire when the illusion had chosen to break around them, and Alistair hopping on one foot, barely half his armor removed, on the other side of the flames.

Their eyes met, and the glorious moment of freedom curdled in the sudden realization that Alistair's pants were a bit too tight, and hers were gone entirely. She slapped her arms across her chest, every hair on her body suddenly standing on end in protest.

She growled, "Turn. Around. Now." And glared until the he hopped in a tiny circle and crouched down in shame in his half-shed gear.

Despite whatever mixed animosity had grown between her and Leliana, she suddenly felt immensely grateful as the woman stood before her with her gear bundled up in her arms, eyes gently averted as she smiled playfully. "Do forgive him," Leliana squeaked, a laugh barely captured behind her teeth.

Normally Wynne would have chastised their silliness, but her gaze and breath were taken by the statue above them, pausing to mouth a prayer.

Though Kyrn lagged behind almost as long as Alistair did reclothing herself, she was the first to ascend the steps. All her companions stood reverently staring, hands clasped together in a moment of calm rapture, murmuring a chant probably too sacred for her ears.

Each footfall echoed tenfold against the crenellated walls, her steps grating as if the marble steps were never meant for iron-studded footwear to touch them. Furtively, her hand traced over the rim of the urn at the top of the pedestal. The small vase seemed so plain, so unassuming after the struggle it took to finally reach it. Every inch of her was suddenly tense with unease. How did one go about harvesting the ashes of a revered ancestor? This quest was wholly foreign to the Dalish; lesser crimes had started wars between the clans. The places where the revered dead were buried could be visited, but their bodies remained sealed with their treasures. To disturb their remains, even with a cleansing fire was the highest violation of their memory.

"You did destroy that vial?" Leliana questioned, eyes blazing with suspicion. "Right?"

Glaring back at the Chantry rogue, Kyrn thrust her fist into the jar, emptied the contents back into a pouch and thumped it into Leliana's chest remorselessly. As the woman staggered back, she clutched her pauldron, and dragged her down to eye level to growl, "You really think I would poison and destroy what you believe in, like you Shems did to us?"

Her ears burned, an indignant fire rushing down her neck as she strode angrily down the stairs, Leliana's sputtering empty apologies falling on deaf ears as Kyrn broke into a sprint towards the exit archway, eyes blurred with tears as she dashed towards the pinpoint of light that marked the outside air at the end of the tunnel, running the gauntlet in reverse.

*,*,*

The air was too hot, too thick to breathe. Zevran swallowed greedily as he made his way back to the first gallery, the ceiling finally rising away from the narrow corridor into the atrium, holding the sudden claustrophobia back with it.

Though the stone carvings felt cool against his forehead as he leaned over for a moment's reprieve, it only made the fire in his gut more pronounced, and the clamour in his ears louder.

"Brasca," Zevran cursed under his breath, pounding the stone once for emphasis before he forced himself upright. "Why should my mind be dwelling on her like this?" He thought angrily, his senses twitching at everything around him like wind over a fresh burn.

He reminded himself that Rinna was almost a year dead now, and tried to take consolation in the thought that anyone could die at a moment's notice. Peasant or prince, farmer or soldier, they all lived under the razor's edge. Most were just more oblivious than he.

But it was not Rinna's face that concerned him; hers would haunt his dreams all his life, he knew that. It was Kyrn's voice echoing in his mind again, screaming not his name, but another.

Tamlen!

Zevran rubbed his hand across his face, more confused than ever. He couldn't shake that look on her face, tear-streaked, ugly with doubt and sorrow over a dead man she did not even trust them enough to mention before now.

He knew, if he was a better man he would have consoled her, taken her into his arms, but the sound of the name on her lips still rattled him. He did not feel empathy at the sight of her tears, only unease at his own mixed emotions, his mind still lingering on a different woman, long dead. That he was even upset over Kyrn's insignificant betrayal confused him more. He had offered his body, and she had offered hers, she did not owe him an explanation.

The quick slap of footfalls crashed through his thoughts, quiet and soft enough that they could only be Kyrn's. She blasted past him before he was fully removed from his thoughts, only slowing as her feet struck the loose gravel frozen outside the temple, a string of Elven curses bouncing through the Ravine as she coughed to catch her breath.

"What happened in there?" Zevran called as he stepped into the blinding light of the mountaintop, the sky so painfully white that the color seemed to have been burned away by the sun.

She did not turn back to him, still cursing and recovering her breath, hunched over her knees. He continued to ask, "Did we get the silly chantry artifact, or do we have to find some other band of crazed humans to kill?"

Kyrn finally stood up, glancing back at him like one awaking from a daze. Her eyes were dark, puffy and bloodshot, thin glints of white sprinkled over her face like old chalk lines as her lips quavered to speak. "Ma lethallan… Tamlen… is gone."

He wondered for a moment how frightful he must have looked himself, because she crept towards him with the same hesitance she had reserved for the wolf, reaching her hands up slowly to cup his cheeks as she gazed back with incomprehensible longing in the distant darting of her eyes.

She leaned in, arching up to her tip-toes to plant a dry kiss on his lips, tasting of blood and salt and charcoal as mouths parched by thin air met for just a brief moment.

"He is gone. And you are here," she said quietly, as she rested her head against his chest, arms limply touching his shoulders. "I should not be so unkind to you."

At first, he did not even want to touch her. But slowly, as he listened to the puff of her breath on his armor, the anger unwound. Before he understood what had changed, he found himself mesmerized by the curling clouds her sighs left behind. Looking down at the flare of her eyelashes, almost completely obscured by her disheveled hair, he finally smirked. "I might need a reminder."

She blinked up at him, an uncertain smile tugging at her cheeks.

He reached up to scratch his chin, the other hand lightly walking up her hip as he drawled, "These last few days have been… trying, true, but I recall a great many delicious moments. When, pray tell, were you unkind to me?"

His smile seemed to infect her, and she coughed out a chuckle. He did not know what image was playing behind her eyes as she looked away with a bite of her lip, but suddenly he could not stop remembering the freckles that dappled the base of her back, spiralling down into dark, secret places.

As they kissed again more languidly, the names "Tamlen" and "Rinna" did not seem as bothersome as they had before.

*Lupita: "She wolf." A cute nickname Zevran has given Kyrn, without her knowing yet what it means.