"Captain, we should discuss this."
"We can discuss it on the way." Keela ignores the rest of Aveline's protests and calls Iron Bull with her marc. "How fast can you be ready?"
"Ready for what?"
"Everything. We're leaving the ship."
"Shit, twenty minutes? It's gonna be light. Lot of our equipment is too buried. Heavy excavator is definitely busted."
"I want some of your crew to stay behind and help fix the ship anyways. Just…bring the essentials, whatever that is. And make it fifteen and I'll see you get an extra ten percent if we ever make it back. I-"
"Unauthorized launch of an escape pod in progress," Shale's voice bounces off the metal walls.
"What? Who?"
"Unknown. They are overriding my commands and oh- they have successfully separated from the ship now.I am…not pleased."
"That makes two of us." She gives orders to the senior officers around her - Aveline will remain with the ship to command in her absence and Anders will stay with the wounded while Merrill will accompany her to the coordinates. Her expertise will no doubt help with whatever awaits them. "Sister Pentaghast, I'd like you to stay behind as well and Templar Carver will come with us. And Varric, someone go get him for me. I want to keep him close. Shale, I-"
"Captain Lavellan! Captain!" As they turn the corner Ensign Sulenera runs towards them, bright eyes wide and lungs gasping for air. "It's…Lieutenant Harel, he's taken one of the escape pods. I didn't-I wasn't sure if I should stop him, I'm sorry."
"It appears he is following a similar course to the location your marc has provided, Captain."
"Why? What could be there that's so important?" Anders asks.
Keela thinks about Harel's eyes full of guilt and shame and something dark like the endless abyss of empty space. There was distant memory attached to the touch of his hand, a half remembered thing in the way the voices called out in her mind. The marc's power sings up her spine and she grits her teeth and steels her resolve. "I plan to find out. Suit up Shale, you're coming too."
Within seventeen minutes the skiff rises through the toxic, swamp air and follows the path of Harel's escape pod. Even with larger engines they'll never catch him before he reaches the marc's mark. Keela only hopes that there will still be time to stop him. The others aren't sure about his intentions but she knows them, somehow. Like the way a room was once organized before the furniture moved - known and forgotten at the same time.
"Some parts of the planet seem habitable enough although looks like that wasn't always the case," Merrill announces as her eyes flit from her screen to stare in wonder at the world around them. "There are signs of old factories like oil, gas, nuclear. An unnatural warming event happened with some nuclear fallout too I bet. Quite a mess actually, but it's been years since someone lived here. Centuries."
"Can you see what we're headed for yet?" Keela asks.
"Long range scans say…" Merrill squints. "I don't know. It just looks like a mountain, with maybe some ruins. Too far away for a composite scan still."
"Let me know when-"
Static noise blares in her brain as the skiff disappears in a flash. She finds herself on a battlefield set beneath a bright sun and cloudless sky. Gunfire punches the ground by her feet, sending sprays of road and earth bursting upwards. She ducks beneath a tree cracked in half.
"They're overwhelming us!" she shouts in a voice too deep to be her own.
"How did they get through the barrier? It should not be possible!" another yells above the din of war. They're all elves wearing golden armor and heavy marcs around their wrists- ones just like hers. The soldier next to her looks over his shoulder and his dark eyes widen. "Look out! It's-"
She never gets to find out what it was as she's thrown back onto the deck of the skiff. Hands and knees digs into the unforgiving metal and she feels like she's falling apart again, like she could easily seep through the voids in the weave beneath her.
Something heavy rests between her shoulder blades. "You okay, Boss?"
Keela glances up and recoils at the sight - a man with wide horns and patch over one eye. A monster, she thinks, but no. No she knows this face, knows his name somewhere on her heavy tongue. "You…The Iron Dragon?"
"Uh, no. But shit that would've been a lot better."
"Bull, Iron Bull. I'm sorry, I…"
"Oh my!" Merrill's exclamation pulls at their attention. "It's not a mountain, it's a structure! It's…it's huge."
With Bull's help, Keela makes it back to the viewport and catches sight of the mammoth thing they're quickly approaching. It does look like a mountain with green life growing atop, but the shape of it is too strange in some places, the gentle slope of a dome, unnatural pillars growing upwards at one end. Further down she can see metal peeking through vines and roots, but everything blurs as a wave of nausea and weakness sweeps over her.
"Should've brought the doc. She's not looking too good," Bull comments and moves to support her better. "Maybe we-"
"No," Keela says, more to herself than to anyone else, and punches her palm down onto the back of Sulenera's seat. "Get us down there."
The ensign lands the ship a few hundred feet away from the structure and stays behind as the rest of the crew steps out into filtered sunlight wearing full masks and armor. Iron Bull and his second in command keep a hover pack between them full of excavation equipment and a few weapons for they have no idea what awaits them inside. The most impressive piece of technology walks out of the skiff last. The robot is a massive thing made of durable, dynamic metals segmented into many pieces and intricate hydraulics and electronics that hiss and shine with each step taken, but it doesn't belong to the Chargers.
"You all right, Shale?" Merrill asks.
"Systems are normal." Gigantic fists uncurl and curl as the A.I. glances at itself and then lifts glowing eyes up into the sky above. "I have never been outside before. There was no time to test this prototype out in the field. Why does the ground squish underfoot?"
"Let's go," Keela says and drags herself towards the looming fortress ahead. They come across Harel's pod as they grow nearer. The door is left ajar, lights flashing bright on the console inside, and she can see footprints in the soft ground. They follow his path and come across a part of the structure free of underground and decay. It looks like an airlock, round and a few people wide across.
"I can probably crack the door. The tech looks old so should be no surprises," Krem says as he begins to fish through the stash of equipment.
Varric shakes his head as he releases one of his camera spheres into the air. "You wouldn't be saying that if you were on the last mission."
"Don't you want to make history, Varric?" Carver speaks up.
"Not if it makes mehistory, Junior."
The Templar groans. "Don't call me that."
Keela.She sucks in a breath as a voice breathes into her ear and twists her body around to find no one there. You know the way. You are the way. The marc around her wrist vibrates with excitement and she knows. She can see it in her mind, a seed planted there by someone else's hand. There is the world that is and a world that was shooting up from the ground and blooming before her eyes.
"What are you-" She steps passed Krem and lifts her palm up towards the center of the rounded door. The lines going up and down her arm pulse once, twice, race down her fingers and seem to travel into the metal below. There's a whirl, a groan, before pieces begin to separate and shift. The door rolls away with barely a whisper and reveals a short hallway with another similar blockade at the end.
"Well that's…weird, right?" Bull remarks as Keela doesn't hesitate to step inside.
Varric gives a short laugh. "Just you wait, Tiny. I have a feeling the real fun is only beginning."
With varying degrees of exuberance the rest of the team followers their captain into the corridor. The door shuts behind Shale and throws the small space into a brief darkness before long lights on the floor and ceiling blaze on. Something in the walls seems to come to life as a low humming sound filling the air before the lights expand and wash over them all.
"It's like a scrubber," Carver says. "Maybe it's a science facility?"
"How can it still be working after all this time?" Merrill reaches out to touch the walls, a sparkling white despite the world outside, and the panels turn blue beneath her touch like ripples atop a pond. After a brief cycle, the hall returns to its normal illumination and the door at the end opens.
"There's oxygen in here," Merrill announces as she checks her marc. "Nitrogen…no traces of harmful chemicals. I think it's okay to take off our helmets."
Keela is the first to take off her own and takes a tentative sip of the air around them. It is somewhat stale, like the smell of a library locked away, but better than some of the filtered air she's had to endure in other place. It gets easier to breathe as they step out of the small chamber and into another hallway although this one is much larger with two branches curving out of sight.
"This way," Keela announces and moves towards the left.
"How do you know?"
"I can see it." She can hear it too. Elves walk the pathways around them, apparitions that move right through their supply cache and their bodies. Their ghostly voices sound like songs as Elvhen fills the hall and she can understand some of it at times, like she is bobbing up from the deep waters to hear the gulls above.
Around the corner they come across a strange panel sticking out from a side wall. A hole rests in the center with a black substance that moves like inky water. She knows, quite suddenly, exactly what to do. Despite the protests of the others, Keela sticks her arm with the marc inside. The liquid is cool against her skin and lights up with green energy that shoots through the rest of the large panel and starts a chain reaction of awakening across every door and panel in sight. She feels the texture of the ground beneath her, the wiring running through the walls, the moss and growth growing against the exoskeleton outside. She can see the fighting ships in the hangar, the number of chairs in the galley.
She can see Harel ten levels above them pause in his pacing and turn towards the sounds coming from below and she knows - it is not a factory. It is not a building at all. "This is a ship."
"What? Really? Must be twice as big as anything in the fleet," Carver says.
"And this is some sort of interface with the main computer, but I can't do much from here. I think this is only a minor maintenance post."
"Do you think it works with any marc?" Keela removes her hand and steps aside for Merrill's curiosity. The scientist sticks her hand into the strange device without much fear. It solidifies at her knuckles, turning an angry red, and she retracts her arm with a gasp.
"Merrill!"
"I'm okay," she says as she turns her hand over and over. She tries again, slower this time, and the same thing happens. "I guess not."
"So…a marc, a human invention mind you, that you found in some ruins underground brought us all the way here to Arlathan, the Elvhen homeworld, and is the only thing that can interact with this place, this ship," Varric summarizes. "And somewhere in here is our missing pilot who somehow also managed to board without trouble. Stop me when I start making sense."
"Maybe we can look for spare parts, or-"
No! the voices shout over Carver's words. The truth. We have been silent for too long.
She blinks and finds herself standing on a beach with sand cooling between her toes. The sun sets against the velvet waves, casting the sky in brilliant colors like paint swirled across a sapphire canvas. In the darkening light she can see a figure perched at the edge of sand and surf, pants rolled high against their calves as lazy waves lap against feet.
There is something familiar about the figure in front of her, something familiar about this place and the rolling dunes around them, but she cannot dwell on the thoughts long as she approaches. She doesn't speak - there's an ethereal quality the quiet moment, the held breath as day turns into night, that she doesn't want to break. When she's close enough to reach out and touch they turn to face her and she sees the edge of a smile before the sunset explodes and throws her into another memory.
It is daytime but she can hardly tell through all the black clouds burning and ships zooming low above. The quiet surf has been replaced by heavy gunfire and screams. Blood paints the ground red and the waves surge with it in a frothy pink mixture full of debris and destruction. The sky is not falling gently - it is crashing around them.
For all the noise it is quiet in her head, filled with a buzzing sound of disbelief as she surveys the carnage of her kin laying in waste around her. It should be loud with the chorus of her friends, all their thoughts looped together and working as one to fight their enemy, but there is only a silence as deep as it is lonely. She is the only one left.
As her knees crash into the sand she lets out a scream that no one can hear.
"Captain!"
It is Templar Hawke that holds her this time. The emblem emblazoned on his armor swims as if it is a sword forged from rubber and a rushing noise like a tidal wave fills her head.
"Oh, her nose!" comes Merrill's cry.
"Hold on, I have a med kit in here somewhere." Keela brings a few fingers to her nose as The Iron Bull looks through his stash and pulls them back to see blood coating the tips. She's not sure who helps her wipe away the rest or hold the cloth there until the bleeding stops. It seems a long time before her head is clear enough to see her people properly and when she does they are all wearing concern.
"No," she says before anyone bothers to suggest they turn back, her voice coarse like she's swallowed salt water. There will be no surviving this if she leaves. There may be no surviving this if she stays, but the memories, the voices… "I have to finish this. I have to find it."
"Find what?" Varric asks.
"The truth."
Haven's crew drops into silence, sharing loaded glances and disagreements working inside their minds, and it is Shale that finally steps forward. "Then I suggest you remove yourself from the floor. I doubt it will be found there."
Without a warning, Shale bends down and scoops her up and Keela is too tired to do anything but frown in annoyance. The texture of the robot's outer surface changes to something smooth and almost soft and she rests her cheek against the cool comfort offered.
"Which course now, Captain?"
In her mind she sees Harel somewhere in the ship above and now recognizes the shape of the person on the beach in the way he stands with hands clasped behind his back, in the way his mouth curled into a grin inside her quarters, in the way his eyes were as desperate as the wretched cry of a soul alone. He is an answer, in a sea of questions. "Up."